AURORA | Officials from city management, the police department and the police officers’ union are hammering out details on a new review board that would look at controversial incidents with police.
The plan — which stems from a request by Mayor Steve Hogan last fall — could go before the full council this spring.
At City Council’s Public Safety Committee meeting early this month, City Manager Skip Noe said that under the current parameters of the plan, a board made up of police officers and citizens would investigate controversial incidents involving police.
Officials have said those incidents could include allegations of police brutality to other misconduct by officers.
Noe said the public would be chosen randomly from a pool of 20 citizens picked by city council. The officers would include a commander, lieutenant and two officers who share a rank with the officer in question.
The board would make a recommendation to the police chief about what discipline, if any, the officer should face. The chief would then have the final say on discipline, but as is the case now, officers could appeal the discipline to the city’s civil service commission.
While officials have a basic framework for the board laid out — one that is largely based on a similar system used by police in Phoenix — Noe said they are still working on details.
“There is still a lot of work to be done,” he said.
One of those includes making sure the board’s work is confidential, Noe said.
“We will talk a little about confidentiality, and the need for this to be something that doesn’t become the subject of civil service testimony in the future,” he said.
Up until a few years ago, the department had a disciplinary review board that operated in a similar fashion. But officials, including Chief Dan Oates, said last year that system failed because board members were once subpoenaed about their testimony during a subsequent civil service appeal.
The plan Noe laid out early this month is different from the plan Hogan initially proposed last fall.
Under Hogan’s plan, city council would appoint a paid police monitor who, along with the monitor’s support staff, would investigate complaints against police officers, including alleged incidents of police misconduct.
That plan met a chilly response from city council last year and Hogan said he likely couldn’t muster enough votes to get it through council.
While Hogan said the plan Noe unveiled has value, he would like the city to consider selecting a mediator to oversee deliberations from the group of citizens, as opposed to having the police department choose the mediator.
Either way, Hogan said it’s important that officials try to develop a system sooner rather than later.
He noted that while the Public Safety meeting where the plan was unveiled was sparsely attended, that wouldn’t be the case if a high-profile case unfolds.
“I guarantee that if something did happen, there would be a lot of people out there clamoring for something to be done,” he said.