The long-awaited Police Citizen Review Commission is going to have to wait
even longer.
At the suggestion of Ward 10 Alderman Bruce Strom, the ordinance to create the commission will remain tabled in committee until the three consultants who originally advised the Springfield City Council on the topic can be reconvened. It’s a scheduling challenge not likely to be surmounted until October at the earliest, according to Corporation Counsel Jenifer Johnson.
“We are still trying to coordinate three busy consultants’ schedules and arrive at a common date when all can be in Springfield,” Johnson says.
The consultants are K. Felicia Davis, administrator of the Citizens Review Board of Syracuse, N.Y.; Mark Gissiner, manager of Cincinnati’s Office of Municipal Investigation; and Richard Jerome, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who aided the plaintiffs in the Springfield voting rights case in the mid-1980s and is now president of a consulting firm specializing in civil rights and police reform.
Ward 2 Alderman Frank McNeil, who began offering ordinances proposing such a board as early as 1989, sees no reason to have the three experts return.
“I don’t want the delay,” he says. “I think the decision has got to be made and it’s our decision. We have to model it on what we think is best for Springfield.”
At last week’s council meeting, in a move that stunned his colleagues, McNeil made a motion to bring the current version of the ordinance out of committee (where it has been ripening since March 2003) and vote it up or down that night. The motion failed.
Prior to making that motion, McNeil announced he would alter his ordinance by adding language ensuring officer confidentiality and dropping the request for subpoena power. However, that doesn’t mean he has given up on subpoena power completely.
“I think we’re going to have to come back and revisit that sooner or later,” McNeil says.
“You know that old saying about the camel? Once the camel gets his nose into the tent, you may as well let the whole camel in.”
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2004.
