THE POWER OF THE CRB [Police Citizen Review Board]

If you are a longtime reader of Key West The Newspaper, you know that, after 18 years of publishing The Blue Paper, I retired last November. Since that time, I have been finishing up several personal projects– like sorting out 18 years of back issues to donate to the history department at the library. I also have a Peace Corps application pending– I have at least one more adventure left in me. So while I am waiting to go to Africa or somewhere, I told Naja and Arnaud Girard that I would be happy to make some editorial contributions to their new on-line venture. Those contributions might be news stories or opinion pieces– or re-publication of special stories that have appeared in KWTN over the years. This week, I have some comments about a story currently in the news.

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There was a page one article in the Key West Citizen last week about a local man being turned away when he went to the police station to file a written complaint against a police officer who has allegedly been harassing him for at least a year. Scooter deliveryman Kenneth Lawrence told the Citizen Review Board (CRB) that when he went to the police station to file a complaint against motorcycle officer Randall Hartle, Sgt. Robert Allen simply refused to take his complaint.

The members of the CRB voted unanimously to recommend to Police Chief Donie Lee that he formally reprimand Allen for “deficient service” and they asked that Lee meet with CRB Chairman Larry Beaver and Executive Director Sue Srch to discuss changes to the police complaint process.

As a longtime police watcher, here’s my take on this. I hope I’m wrong, but it will probably be a cold day in hell before Chief Lee reprimands Sgt. Allen. There are a couple of reasons why:

1. Chief Lee believes that police officers have broad discretion as to how they do their jobs. That means that, under the color of discretion, they can get away with doing just about anything. Or not doing just about anything.

2. Sgt. Allen is one of the longtime “bad boys” in the department. And Chief Lee knows that if he ever gets in trouble as chief of police, it probably will not be because he offends the city manager or a city commissioner or two. It will be because he gets sideways with the small cadre of rogue cops still hanging out in the Key West Police Department. They can destroy him in a heartbeat.

I do believe, however, that Lee will politely meet with Beavers and Srch. In fact, Srch told us that the meeting has been set for today, Friday, September 6. After that meeting, Chief Lee may even order his duty officers to, in the future, at least write down the complaints of citizens who go to the trouble to come to the station to make a complaint. One might wonder, however, why such an order was not already in place. After all, the CRB has been in existence since 2003– and one of the reasons Key West voters approved the creation of a police oversight board here is that the cops were routinely blowing off citizen complaints. Also, Chief Lee is smart enough to know that one way to keep the CRB off his back is for the department to efficiently handle complaints before the CRB has to step in. And Sgt. Allen knew or should have known that.

So what was Sgt. Allen thinking when he told Kenneth Lawrence to, in essence, pound sand when Lawrence tried to file a written complaint? I don’t know for sure. But I think that he was probably just revealing his “I’m a cop and you’re not” mentality. And I don’t think that he had any fear at all that Police Chief Donie Lee might reprimand him in any way.

Having said that, it must be noted that Lee did strip Allen of his sergeant’s stripes back in August 2010 when Allen, off duty, was inadvertently pulled over by a fellow cop on suspicion of driving drunk. Was he arrested and jailed that night? Be serious. He was given a ride home– another example of “discretion” at the KWPD. In any event, it didn’t take long for Allen to get his stripes back. Go figure.

So let’s all watch together to see if Allen was right. Frankly, I think he was right. Not about his refusal to write down the scooter deliveryman’s complaint, but right about whether or not Chief Lee has the cajones to reprimand him. One rationale Chief Lee might use to not take any action is to plead that he doesn’t know who is lying– Allen or Lawrence.

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One possible explanation for Sgt. Allen’s blow-off of Lawrence’s attempt to file a complaint is that he may still feel that the CRB is an illegitimate body when it comes to civilian oversight of the Key West Police Department (KWPD). Like many police officers, Allen was opposed to the creation of the CRB back in 2002. Back then, the KWPD was virtually out of control. Use of excessive force, selective enforcement and falsification of official police reports was business as usual. Citizen complaints about police officers were usually just dismissed or disappeared into a black hole. I and my staff at the Blue Paper reported these stories week after week. Some of our critics said that we were “targeting” the KWPD. Not true. We were simply reporting the news.

During this period, Key Westers were becoming increasingly outraged about police corruption– and a small group of citizens was forming a committee to try to create a citizens board to oversee the police department. They called themselves the Committee for a Citizen Review Board (CCRB). Attorney Sam Kaufman and black activist Peggy Grant volunteered to chair the committee. They had a simple plan. They would simply ask the city commission to create a Citizen Review Board– and they were optimistic that the commission would make that happen. You see, the Key West City Charter has a wondrous provision that says that citizens can make law by simply going to the City Commission and asking for it. So that’s what the CCRB did.

They were encouraged by the initial response from some of the commissioners– but there was significant opposition from the police union and law enforcement. As a result, the Commission simply froze. No action. No CRB. In hindsight, I feel sure that some of those opponents now look back at that time and wish that they had created some crappy little oversight board with virtually no power just to get the CCRB off their backs– because another part of the provision in the City Charter that enables citizens to make law says that, if the City Commission does not create the new law requested by the citizens, the citizens can take the petition route. The Charter spells out a specific process a citizens’ group can follow to write a new law and gather signatures to get the proposed law on the ballot. The process is complicated and it is not easy. But it is an option.

That process began immediately after it became apparent that the City Commission was not going to take any action. The first thing that was needed was a specific law to sell to the citizens. With the help of NACOLE (The National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement), the ACLU, selected oversight boards already in existence around the country, as well as several lawyers on the CCRB, the best and strongest elements were molded into a potential Citizen Review Board law for Key West– including subpoena power. And the proposed law was to be an amendment to the City Charter, not just an ordinance. The City Commission can change or gut an ordinance on a whim. But only the voters can change an amendment to the City Charter.

If members of the CCRB were able to get enough signatures to put the proposed law on the ballot and if the voters approved, the Charter dictated that the City Commission would have no choice other than to make it law in Key West– with no debate and no changes.

As word spread about what the CCRB was trying to do, membership of the committee soared. Once they had a draft law, volunteers spread out over the city to collect signatures on the petitions. A draft of the proposed law was attached to each petition. Signed petitions were turned into the Supervisor of Elections Office weekly so that the signatures could be checked to make sure that only registered voters were signing. But a large percentage of the signatures were being rejected because many signers were either not registered voters or because scrawled signatures did not match signatures on file at the Elections Office. Volunteers learned not to collect signatures in bars. As a result, as the deadline came and went, and the CCRB did not have enough approved signatures to get the question on the ballot. They were close. Very close. But, as they say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

But, sometimes, just plain ol’ luck counts. As it turned out, the city commissioners wanted to get a couple of questions on the ballot, too. And they, too, had missed the deadline. So they asked longtime Supervisor of Elections Supervisor Harry Sawyer to extend the deadline for them and Harry said that he would do that– but he would have to give the CCRB more time, too. That gave the CCRB the time needed and they easily got the needed number of approved signatures.

Well, then, the next challenge was to conduct, literally, an election campaign to get more yes votes than no votes to get the proposed Charter amendment passed. And the opposition was the police union, and they had lots of money to run big ads in all the papers (except the Blue Paper). Also then-Mayor Jimmy Weekley and then-City Manager Julio Avael and then-Police Chief Buz Dillon all had weekly time slots on the radio and they all were opposed to the creation of a CRB. The city manager was also using his city-paid TV show to promote no votes. I gave full page ads in the Blue Paper to the cause every week, and I assume that helped, but it was hard to compete with the blitz coming from the other side. At one point, uniformed on-duty police officers were going door-to-door passing out literature promoting no votes.

But apparently, the time had come for police oversight in Key West. On election day on November 2, 2002, more than 60 percent of Key West voters who went to the polls voted yes to create a Citizen Review Board! Whammo bammo!

In the article in the Key Wet Citizen last week, the reporter wrote that the CRB voted to “direct” Chief Lee to take disciplinary action against Sgt. Allen. “Ask” would have been a better word and, in fact, that is the word that the reporter did use in another part of the story. The CRB does not have the power to direct the KWPD to do anything. Although members of the CRB do have the authority to investigate complaints concerning Key West police officers, they can only make recommendations concerning discipline and policy. But those recommendations are public and the chief of police is required by law to respond publicly– and that is the real power of the CRB. The cops can’t just sweep complaints under the rug like they used to do in the old days.