Should citizen review boards be able to crack down on bad cops?
Before the special session began last month, Republican Senator Steve Newman of Bedford County met up with all the law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors in his district to hear their concerns about a proposal to grant new powers to citizen review boards. One issue came up as a chief concern – the ability of these boards to issue binding disciplinary actions.
“This was one of their greatest concerns is not setting up the boards or the pathway to the boards, it’s that these individuals that have no knowledge," Newman says. "As a matter of a fact a current law-enforcement person is forbidden from being on this board — that they are going to be given the right to fire, hire, demote.”
Senator Chap Petersen is a Democrat from Fairfax City, and he says the legislation does not require these boards have the ability to discipline bad cops. It just gives local governments the ability to grant that authority to the review boards.
“It’s up to the locality to implement that and to put parameters around that, and if that locality enacts that policy and it has a negative effect on their police force and on their morale, that’s something they’re going to have to balance," he explains. "We can’t micromanage that here from the state Senate.”
The version that will be considered on the Senate floor is slightly different than the one that’s moving forward in the House, where lawmakers want to make creation of these civilian review boards mandatory and include sheriff’s offices.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
