All about Policing with a sprinkle of Criminal Justice – written by a Secret Contrarian
This is about improper police parking.
Police brass are refusing to implement a major reform recommended by city probers earlier this year. And the agency won’t say why.
— Read on nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/11/25/exclusive-nypd-rejects-ending-self-enforcement-scandal-at-precinct-houses
The Public Safety section of the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) has completed a follow-up to its June 2022 evaluation, Fairness and Consistency in the Disciplinary Process for Chicago Police Department (CPD) Members. In this follow-up, OIG assesses the corrective actions taken by the agencies in response to each recommendation.
Get the report HERE.
The Public Safety section of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) works to improve the effectiveness, accountability, and transparency of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and Chicago’s police accountability agencies, and to transform the critical relationship between CPD and the communities it serves.
Get the report HERE.
The Public Safety section of the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General has completed a follow-up to its December 2020 “Evaluation of the Use of the Affidavit Override in Disciplinary Investigations of Chicago Police Department Members.”
Get the report HERE.
Whether responding to a 911 call or patrolling a Beat, Chicago Police Department (CPD) members are essential to ensuring public safety by responding to emergencies and being present in communities. Yet, measuring CPD’s patrol presence in a particular location in the City is a complex, opaque, and imprecise exercise.
Get the report HERE.
Iowa City will get rid of its Community Police Review Board to comply with a new Iowa law that forbids large cities from having citizens review police conduct.
— Read on www.press-citizen.com/story/news/local/2025/08/21/iowa-city-to-dissolve-community-police-review-board-to-comply-with-new-iowa-law/85733979007/
The issue with settlements of this kind is they are vastly more political than a trial. Settlements can be agreed to purely on the notion of what will get me the most votes. It’s very difficult to have settlements indicate guilt when the processes is more political than a trial. 
A 10-month KCUR investigation revealed that the Kansas City Police Department accepts liability for approximately two wrecks per month. Over three years, the department paid out more than $1 million in legal settlements.
— Read on www.kcur.org/news/2025-06-23/kcpd-car-crash-lawsuit-settlement-kansas-city-police
Commentary: 2 key concepts about policing that are important to understand.
The first is policing is local. Police in California and New York are similar but they are also different. If a police department in California does something improper that is not an indication that the police in New York are doing the same improper act. This leads to the second point, Governmental Home Rule. This means that each municipality is it’s own government. This allows the local city, town, or village (c-t-v) to have dominion over it’s municipal agencies. This allows each local government to control it’s police department. Therefor each municipal government, if it chooses, can MANDATE police reform of it’s local police department.
The bottom line is that the DOJ is not needed to initiate police reform. The Governments in Memphis, TN, Louisville, KY, Lexington, MS, Phoenix, AZ, Minneapolis, MN, Mount Vernon, NY, and Worcester, MA, can force their local police department to initiate or continue reforms suggested from the DOJ investigations.
When police department reform is initiated at the local level it works better. The Mayor or Supervisor of a C-T-V calls for police reform, the Council or Trustees support it (at least through a budget line), the Chief or Commissioner of the police department makes the change. If the Chief/Commissioner doesn’t follow through with the reform that can be fired. If the Council or Trustees don’t support the reform efforts they can be voted out of office. The same with the Mayor or Supervisor if they don’t mandate police reform they can be voted out of office. Now the citizens have a voice, if they think reform is not needed they can use their voices and votes to make changes. The same if a large enough group is calling for reform they can pressure their local government to make changes.
This is much better that having the secret DOJ control local police reform. The C-T-V elected officials have no voice, only to agree with the DOJ’s findings. The community can’t pressure anyone because the DOJ is not elected by the community.
The ACLU Press Release
The Seven States Safety Campaign targets police departments where the Biden DOJ found rampant police brutality and racial targeting
— Read on www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-and-community-groups-demand-justice-and-transparency-as-trump-doj-abandons-federal-police-oversight
The Citizens Police Oversight Commission (CPOC) today announced the release of its 2024 Annual Report, a detailed account of the agency’s growing impact in building a more transparent, accountable, and community-centered system of policing in Philadelphia.
The 2024 Annual Report details a year of significant progress for CPOC, despite a challenging national environment for police oversight agencies. Under the leadership of Executive Director Tonya McClary, Esq., who was appointed in May 2024, CPOC has taken major steps to strengthen its oversight functions, engage the public, and advocate for systemic reforms.
“Even with the challenges we faced in 2024, CPOC remained resolutely committed to fostering transparency, accountability, and trust between the community and law enforcement,” said McClary. “Our work is helping to shape a future that is safer, fairer, and filled with opportunities for every Philadelphian.”
Here is an interesting graphic from the report
— Read on www.phila.gov/2025-04-24-citizens-police-oversight-commission-releases-annual-report-highlighting-progress-toward-police-accountability-transparency-and-community-trust/
Get a .PDF copy of the report HERE
The future of police accountability remains uncertain as misconduct persists and focus shifts from reforms.
— Read on www.themarshallproject.org/2025/03/01/law-and-disorder-police-oversight-and-training-confront-a-changing-landscape
The Police Commission and its investigators are in danger of losing core resources in Oakland’s next budget cycle.
— Read on oaklandside.org/2025/02/07/less-than-a-skeleton-crew-planned-cuts-to-oakland-police-oversight/
Seattle’s Community Police Commission was created to amplify the voices of communities affected by policing and weigh in on police reform. But internal conflicts, vacancies, and turnover have frustrated that mission in recent years, according to an outside review.
Now members say they’re trying to move forward in time to influence the city’s latest ordinance governing crowd management and less-lethal weapons.
Seattle’s Community Police Commission was created as part of the city’s 2012 consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department, after federal officials found a pattern of unconstitutional excessive force by police.
— Read on www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-community-police-commission-seeks-to-regroup-from-internal-turmoil
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
For the past five years, the City of Boulder embraced civilian oversight of the Boulder Police Department to ensure that the Boulder community participated in oversight of the Boulder Police Department (BPD). Similar to other municipalities and counties, oversight of BPD brought challenges to the community. One year ago, the City Council updated Boulder’s police oversight system when it passed Ordinance 8609.
Boulder City Council authorized the assembly of the Police Oversight Task Force in Spring of 2019 to investigate appropriate oversight of policing in Boulder. In response to recommendations made by the Task Force, Ordinance 8361 was passed in October of 2019, which created the Police Oversight Panel (Panel) and the predecessor to the Independent Police Monitor (Monitor).
Since its inception, the Panel was intended to overrepresent populations that historically experienced underrepresentation while also being more at risk for over-policing. Police oversight in Boulder experienced a tumultuous year in 2023 and continued growth in 2024. In late 2022, the inaugural Monitor resigned and the OIR Group was hired to act as interim Monitor while a replacement Monitor was recruited. At the same time, in early 2023 the City of Boulder also retained consultant Farah Muscadin to work with members of the Panel, community, BPD and legal staff to update the oversight ordinance. The City Council granted the Panel a moratorium to pause core functions to focus on the ordinance update. In August 2023, Sherry Daun began work as the Monitor and in October 2023, Ordinance 8609 passed City Council unanimously.
s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25246266/item_2_-_police_oversight_update.pdf
All about Policing with a sprinkle of Criminal Justice - written by a Secret Contrarian
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