Tag: CLERB

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Opinion Viewpoint

Changing the Guard at MPD

CREDIT: Memphis Police Department

It was recently announced that Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong and nearly half of his command staff are leaving the department. While there’s no question the departure of so many seasoned officers will be a huge loss, it also gives newly inaugurated Mayor Jim Strickland an opportunity to remake the department to better serve the community.

Memphis Police Department

Departing MPD Director Toney Armstrong

The department faces many external challenges and suffers from internal problems that have been long ignored. These challenges are unlikely to be adequately addressed by an insider.

One of the flaws that was exposed in the investigation into the officer involved in the shooting death of Darrius Stewart is the lack of consistent policy positions for officers in what would often be standard situations. 

Currently, rules are written vaguely, giving officers the latitude to make judgment calls. Unfortunately, that latitude can also be used to treat different people in similar situations very differently. This ultimately undermines the relationship between law enforcement and populations that have been wrongly targeted due to circumstances that are beyond their control (race, the condition of their vehicles/residences, and the areas in which they live).

Rules that detail when passengers involved in traffic stops are to identify themselves need to be put in writing. This will ensure people’s privacy rights are respected, and officers don’t accidentally create a situation where an arrest is thrown out due to mishandling.

Clear rules about when to call for backup need to be in place.

Finally, rules about when force, either restraining force or deadly force, is to be used need to be in line with a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which involved an unarmed, fleeing suspect and the Memphis Police Department. 

That ruling states deadly force cannot be used unless the officer has “probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”

The new police administration should actively engage the Citizen Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) on any new policy adopted and treat their relationship as a partnership to both inform the public of new policy and provide oversight when policy violations are reported.

For too long, relations between law enforcement and the public have been strained due to real and/or perceived wrongs committed by officers. Partnering with the CLERB will give the public the assurance that conduct issues will be dealt with in a timely manner.

Changing the way the department polices the city is another issue to address.  Instituting a community policing program would help heal fractures and most likely lead to a real decrease in crime.

Officers in Memphis have little direct contact with the populations they’re serving unless they’re on a call. That means officers only see the people they’re serving when they’re at their worst or in a bad situation. This negatively impacts their outlook on the community and leads to more alienation.

While walking patrols may not be feasible in every neighborhood, focusing on developing relationships in the community will minimize the alienation that is common in traditional patrols. It also builds relationships between the public and police that are durable, even when things go wrong.

Those relationships also provide a “boots on the ground” intelligence to identify other societal ills that may be occurring in communities (domestic violence, child abuse or neglect, unfit housing, wage theft, and other problems people who feel forgotten may not report, because they don’t believe anything will be done about it).

These things are important for a city like Memphis that has a high rate of working poor. While the loss of decades of institutional memory may seem like a severe problem for the city, problems are really just opportunities ripe for the taking.

Positive changes are unlikely to come from within. Institutions have their own inertia and generally follow Newtonian laws of motion, meaning they will most certainly maintain their current velocity and direction unless acted upon by an external force, and even then, they’ll still resist any push to change.

The opportunity for Memphis and law enforcement in the new administration is to identify the right kind of “external force” that will move the department in the right direction and make Memphis not only safer for its citizens but also a city that places a high degree of value in a cooperative relationship between the police and the community.

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News The Fly-By

CLERB Now Has Power to Investigate Police Misconduct

Right around the same time last week that Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich was announcing that a Memphis Police officer would not be criminally charged for shooting an unarmed black man, the Memphis City Council was taking up a vote on how much power a civilian board would have to investigate complaints of police misconduct.

While Connor Schilling, the officer who shot Darrius Stewart, got off without state charges, the council voted in favor of giving the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) more teeth to investigate complaints.

CLERB, which has been in place since 1994 but inactive since 2011, investigates complaints of force, verbal abuse, harassment, arrest, illegal search or entry, intimidation, improper firearm use, or other issues with police.

Perhaps the biggest change for CLERB came in giving the board indirect subpoena power. The board was previously unable to require that police officers involved in a case appear before the board. They also could not require the city to hand over documents pertaining to a case.

But the up-to-date CLERB ordinance gives the board the ability to subpoena officers and documents through a Memphis City Council liaison. Originally, when citizen group Memphis United began proposing the city give CLERB more power, they’d asked for the council to give the board the ability to directly subpoena officers and documents without going through a liaison. But council attorney Allan Wade said such a change would require a citywide referendum.

“What we have instead is the next best thing,” said Paul Garner, organizer for Memphis United. “The council will subpoena requested documents and records on behalf of the review board. If that’s the closest thing we can get without a referendum, we’ll take that over them not being able to issue subpoenas.”

The Rev. Ralph White of Bloomfield Full Gospel Baptist Church has served as the chair of CLERB since before it became inactive in 2011, and he said the subpoena power makes CLERB’s job much easier.

“[Before], we were not able to have contact or dialogue with the police officers who had been charged with offenses, so it was a little difficult for us to adequately represent those complaints,” White said.

The CLERB ordinance also allows for the hiring of an investigator and an administrator to oversee investigations into alleged police misconduct. Since CLERB is an all-volunteer board, its previous incarnation was unable to put enough time into investigations.

“The board members often have other responsibilities beyond the board, so having a dedicated staff is critical,” Garner said.

CLERB works somewhat like an appeals board, White said. First, a complainant must file a report with the Memphis Police Department’s Internal Affairs division. Internal Affairs has 45 days to complete the their investigation, another new addition to the CLERB ordinance. Previously, Internal Affairs cases could take much longer to complete.

“If the complainant isn’t satisfied [with Internal Affairs], they can come to us. We can take the information they have and allow our investigator to go through and make his or her decision and compare that to what’s already out there,” White said.

Once CLERB reaches a conclusion, the board can make a recommendation for a disciplinary action to the police director, but it’s up to the director whether or not the action will be enforced.

The CLERB ordinance passed in council with a 9-2 vote, with only councilmen Reid Hedgepeth and Kemp Conrad voting against it. Conrad said he didn’t have a problem with the idea of CLERB, but he felt that the group pushing for the changes — Memphis United — was anti-police. Memphis United has organized peaceful protests against police violence and supports the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I and others were concerned that the CLERB board allowed these openly anti-police people to hijack the whole communications process,” Conrad said. “What if those people have influence or end up on the [CLERB] board?”

But White said it’s never been the goal of CLERB to “bash police officers.” He said, in some cases where the board finds proof of police misconduct, they’ll suggest more training or a desk position over termination.

“The majority of the time, when we have investigated cases [on the old board], the citizens were found at fault. Often, things happen because citizens were ignorant of the law,” White said. “We’re going to educate citizens on what their rights are and what rights they do not have.

“Many times, when [police] are doing their jobs, they don’t know if a traffic stop will be their last action on this earth. We’re not just there to get the police. Most police are men and women who love our community, and some of them might be bad apples, just like you’ve got in every occupation.”

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Editorial Opinion

CLERB: a force for good

Nowhere is the dilemma of city government in Memphis — and of the officials and current candidates who will be attempting to guide it for the next years — more stark and challenging than in the area of law enforcement. Of the four candidates for mayor generally acknowledged to be the leaders of the pack, one, Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams (on sabbatical during the campaign) is a policeman himself; two others, Councilmen Jim Strickland and Harold Collins have made the matters of youth violence and public safety prominent aspects of their campaigns; and another, incumbent Mayor A C Wharton, finds himself more and more concerned with the issue on a day-to-day basis.

In the last year, no crisis on the national scene has been more omnipresent and unavoidable than that involving the troubled relationship of citizens and their police, particularly when the individuals on opposite sides of the thin blue line have been of different races. The fact of police violence against African Americans has been a nonstop phenomenon, a staple of the daily news, and, while the public reaction has been most intense when the confrontations, often fatal, have been between white cop vs. black citizen, there have been incidents as well involving individuals of the same race.

Not quite matching this in volume, but every bit as terrifying in effect, have been a spate of violent attacks against police. No one in Memphis needs to be reminded of what happened in the last few days to Officer Sean Bolton, who was shot multiple times and left to die while performing a routine traffic stop. If there is a silver lining to this horror, it is in the massive minute-by-minute commitment of city officialdom and law enforcement that brought the suspect, apparently a career criminal, to turn himself in to custody within 24 hours, when it became obvious that he was out of running room. None of the usual racial or political lines were in evidence during this act of collective hot pursuit, and Memphis Police director Toney Armstrong and the personnel of the MPD are to be congratulated for their efforts.

As the fates would have it, this event immediately preceded this week’s latest consideration by the Memphis City Council of a revamped Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board. Both the council and Mayor Wharton have undergone a back-and-forth on how strong this oversight board needs to be, and what its intrinsic powers are.

Whatever the final result of this week’s deliberations, we would urge that the public view the reconfigured board neither as an antagonistic watchdog force nor as a mere advisory body, but as a true partner to law enforcement — a body that can provide positive as well as negative feedback and that spurs our police force further toward the kind of effective protective action that it exists to provide in the first place.

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News News Blog

City Council Discusses Adding Cateria Stokes to Homicide Reward List

Cateria Stokes, the 15-year-old girl who was killed during a drive-by shooting at her house on April 10th, may be the next name added to the city’s reward list for information on homicide suspects.

Cateria Stokes

The Memphis City Council’s Public Safety Committee discussed adding Stokes’ name to the list in their meeting Tuesday morning, and the resolution will be voted on in the full council meeting Tuesday night. If passed, tipsters with information on Stokes’ killer, who remains unknown at this time, could be given a $100,000 reward.

Other names on the city’s homicide reward list include former Memphis Grizzly Lorenzen Wright, Larry Joseph Larkin, Joey Lacy, Cora Gatewood, Calvin Riley, Napoleon Yates, Marco Antonio Calero, Jack Lassiter, and Deryck DeShaun Davenport.

The Public Safety Committee also heard the monthly rape kit update. A member of the rape kit task force told council members that the construction storage room for DNA evidence was moving along and “seeing lots of progress.” As of March, there were 5,246 rape kits that remained untested. That’s down from 5,246 untested in February.

Council members also discussed an ordinance to give the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) more teeth, including the power to subpoena officers and information. The CLERB, which is currently inactive, is designed to provide oversight for citizen complaints against police wrongdoing. Both Director Toney Armstrong and Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams took issue with the idea giving the board subpoena power, claiming that it could impact the officers’ Fifth Amendment rights.

But City Council member Shea Flinn, who once served on an earlier incarnation of the CLERB, urged the council to take action soon and give the CLERB more power.

“All politics aside, this board is about when things don’t go right. And the reason this board wasn’t taken seriously by the city council [in its past incarnation] is because the board wasn’t serious. It had no power,” Flinn said. “And in these economic times, when we’re paying staff [to serve on the board], we cannot do nothing.”

Flinn said a CLERB with more power could help build trust between citizens and law enforcement. The CLERB amendment will be heard in its first reading at Tuesday night’s council meeting.

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News The Fly-By

Memphis United Demands More Accountability for Police Officers

Driving under the influence, aggravated assault, rape, and murder are among the offenses law enforcement are paid to police. Ironically, these very crimes are amid the illegal acts some Memphis officers have been arrested for since last year.

In 2014, 18 officers from the Memphis Police Department (MPD) were arrested. As of April 2nd, there have been four officers apprehended this year for offenses such as sexual exploitation of a minor and driving under the influence.

“We are held to a higher standard because we took an oath to protect and serve, but, by the same token, our officers are treated just like any other citizen who breaks the law,” said MPD spokeswoman Alyssa Macon-Moore. “We’re no different. When we do things that are outside of the perimeters of the law, we must suffer the consequences.”

Memphis United, a coalition of local grassroots organizations and residents against structural and institutional racism, organized the “Bad Apples? FixTheBarrel” rally last Wednesday at the intersection of Lamar and Airways. People waved signs and protested in support of efforts to hold law enforcement more accountable.

The primary approach to help accomplish this goal would be through an amendment of the city’s Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) ordinance. The revision would provide CLERB with the power to subpoena documents and police witnesses, investigate complaints concurrently with the Memphis Police Internal Affairs department, and make disciplinary recommendations to the Memphis Police director, among other authoritative acts. The Memphis City Council’s Personnel Committee will discuss the amendment at its next meeting on April 21st.

Paul Garner led the rally at the intersection of Lamar and Airways. He spoke through a bullhorn at passersby about the importance of police accountability and the need to reinstate CLERB.

“There needs to be a system in place where when people file complaints, it’s tracked and available to the public, and we catch these things before something serious happens,” said Garner, organizing coordinator for the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center (MSPJC). “Some of these guys have multiple complaints filed against them, and if there was a civilian oversight body that had the power to gather that information at the time those complaints were filed, red flags would have gone up and something could have been done before we had a case of rape or sexual assault or domestic violence.”

Last Tuesday, a day before the “Bad Apples” rally, a panel was held at Christian Brothers University to inform the public of CLERB’s origin and how its modification would benefit the city. The panelists included members of CLERB and MSPJC.

During the event, an attendee asked if CLERB would have the ability to demand punishment of officers who unlawfully shoot and kill civilians.

Brad Watkins, executive director of the MSPJC, informed the questioner that CLERB would not investigate criminal matters and “is not the answer to our problems.”

For significant progress to be made, Watkins said, in addition to CLERB, there needs to be a confidential counseling program for Memphis Police officers as well as replacement of leadership in the MPD and at City Hall.

“We have to have a complete change in the culture of MPD,” Watkins said. “Not only the culture of MPD and how it relates to its citizens, but the institution of MPD and its relationship to the psychological health of the officers themselves. Without these things, we’ll only have further harassment and violence in our community. The MPD has to be accountable, open to the public, and [responsive] before there’s a murder and a protest — not constantly playing catch-up afterwards with token gestures that don’t change the reality of people’s lives.”

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News News Blog

Protesters Expose MPD’s “Bad Apples”

Louis Goggans

A woman holds a sign displaying several Memphis Police officers who have been arrested since 2014 at the intersection of Lamar and Airways.

Cars driving through the intersection of Lamar and Airways during rush hour Wednesday were greeted by protesters holding signs that read “#Bad Apples,” “Demand Oversight of the Police,” “We Don’t Need Seedy Police,” and “Protect Us, Don’t Kill Us.”

The protesters were participants of “Bad Apples? FixTheBarrel,” a rally for stronger civilian oversight of police. If passed, an amended version of the city’s Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) ordinance would help accomplish this goal.

The amended ordinance would provide CLERB with the power to subpoena documents and police witnesses, investigate complaints concurrently with Memphis Internal Affairs, and make disciplinary recommendations to the Memphis Police director, among other authoritative acts. It’s slated to be heard by City Council’s Personnel Committee next Tuesday at 8:30 a.m.

LG

Memphis United, a coalition of local grassroots organizations and residents against structural and institutional racism, spearheaded the gathering Wednesday.The event’s theme was inspired by the 20 Memphis Police officers, referred to as “bad apples” by the protesters, who were reportedly arrested between March 2nd, 2014 and March 2nd, 2015.

Around a dozen protesters walked along the sidewalk in front of the Walgreens at 1489 Airways Blvd. while several others stood across the street under a Blue Crush SkyCop.

The diverse collective chanted, “What’s done in the dark will be brought to light! Memphis needs police oversight!” and “Up! Up! With accountability! Down! Down! With police brutality!”

A multitude of drivers honked their horns and lifted fist in support of the movement as they cruised by. 

LG

“If we’ve had 20 officers arrested in a year, that’s almost two a month,” said Paul Garner, organizing coordinator for the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, during the protest. “I think that points to a systemic problem. Because there’s such an outcry from the community, we need to look at systemic solutions. That’s kind of where our whole ‘fix the barrel’ theme comes from. If we want to have good apples in our barrel, we need to look at ways to improve the way we hold law enforcement accountable. There needs to be a system in place where when people file complaints, it’s tracked and available to the public, so that we catch these things before something serious happens.”

 Read next week’s issue of the Flyer for more information on Memphis Police officer arrests and CLERB.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Memphis United Wants Better Board to Police the Police

CREDIT: Saniphoto | Dreamstime.com

The Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB), the independent board that investigates complaints about police officers, was reinstated last June after years of being inactive. But an audit of the board by the Memphis United Coalition found that the board hasn’t reviewed a single case since then.

Part of the reason for the inactivity of the board is its lack of power, according to CLERB Chairman Rev. Ralph White. Now Memphis United has drawn up a list of demands for how CLERB should be operated and what sort of power it should have.

The group addressed those demands in the public comment period of last week’s Memphis City Council meeting, and they plan to work with council members soon to draft a full ordinance increasing CLERB’s power.

“An audit revealed several systemic flaws that limited the ability of the board to function efficiently,” said Paul Garner of Memphis United. “That includes CLERB not having the power to subpoena records or the power to require cooperation of witnesses from the Memphis Police Department.”

Saniphoto | Dreamstime.com

When a civilian has a complaint about excessive use of force by a police officer, illegal search, police harassment, poor customer service by police, property damage by police, or police following incorrect procedures, they’re supposed to first file a complaint with the Memphis Police Department’s (MPD) Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB). If they’re unhappy with the bureau’s findings, they can then appeal their complaint to CLERB.

Memphis United is suggesting that the Memphis City Council give CLERB subpoena power to gain access to police witnesses and documents, the ability to make policy recommendations to the MPD, the ability to investigate complaints concurrently with the IAB, and enough funding to conduct independent investigations into complaints of police misconduct.

“We had a private investigator at one time, and they cut that from the budget,” said White, who served on the last incarnation of the board as well.

CLERB was established in 1994 after 68-year-old Jesse Bogand was shot by police in Orange Mound. At the time, the board was intended to investigate, hear cases, and recommend action on findings of police misconduct. But since police officers were not required to cooperate and because the board didn’t have the power to subpoena documents, CLERB lacked teeth.

The board was eventually dismantled, but it was reinstated in 2014 after a few volunteers at the Manna House, a gathering place for the city’s homeless, attempted to appeal a complaint to CLERB, only to find the board had been inactive for years. The Memphis City Council voted to appoint new members to the board in June 2014, and they also voted to allow Memphis United to host public forums to gain input on how to improve the board.

White said the new board hasn’t heard cases yet because they simply don’t have much power. They’re hoping the council adopts the suggestions of Memphis United.

“We want to make sure we put some of those suggestions in place before we start hearing cases,” White said. “Right now, we simply don’t have enough power on the board to get police officers to come to hearings. We do need a bit more power and authority.”

White said, although the board wants more power, they also want the MPD to know that they’re not in place to oppose the lawful work of the department.

“We want to make sure they understand that we’re not working against them,” White said. “We just want to make sure we have a functional police department that is working for the betterment of the people.”