Boston councilors, administration tussle over civilian review board

Councilors and Mayor Martin Walsh’s administration scrapped over the structure of a possible police civilian review board as the two sides try to hammer out a compromise.

The council is weighing two different proposed ordinances: one from Walsh, based on his Police Reform Task Force’s recommendations to create the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency to oversee one civilian review board for complaints against the department and a separate independent board to review internal-affairs investigations. The other comes from City Councilors Andrea Campbell, Ricardo Arroyo and Julia Mejia, and would create one unified oversight board.

Campbell, who’s running for mayor in 2021, slammed the mayor’s proposal, which involves using executive orders to create the two boards within the OPAT.

“The mayor’s approach to doing this by executive orders is not just disappointing — it falls short of meeting our goal of lasting, independent civilian oversight,” Campbell said.

The councilor said she wants to hear “that the mayor will sign it — we had to get that on public record, in a public hearing, such as this.”

Jerome Smith, Walsh’s chief of civic engagement — who’s in his last week on the job — pushed back on the councilor, saying her “calling on” the mayor to act on police reform when he has an ordinance in front of them doesn’t really make any sense.

“I think it’s just more politics than anything else,” Smith said. “Mayor Walsh has made it very clear his commitment to police reform.”

The task force supported two boards so they can better specialize, Boston NAACP President Tanisha Sullivan said.

Longtime community activist Jamarhl Crawford, one of the members of the task force, had enough of that exchange, saying, “I don’t like this tone of this conversation, so I’m going to opt out for the rest of it before I get myself and others in trouble.”

Mejia, urging the two sides to come together, said the conversation is “leaving a really bad taste in my mouth” because, “This seems like it’s going to be about who’s going to get credit for creating the civilian review board.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3mt9p2h