For the second and final time Monday night, Virginia Beach residents gave public input to the Citizen's Review Panel Task Force about the creation of a citizen's review panel for the city.
“It's the community I live in, reside in, making our community trust in essential public safety is a serious concern for me," Task Force chair Sean Monteiro told 13News Now ahead of a public input meeting.
City council narrowly voted in favor of creating the task force in April by a six-to-five vote. In an effort to build trust and transparency with the police department, it was asked to study five topics:
- The difference between investigatory power and subpoena power, and whether investigatory power can be utilized without subpoena power
- The purpose and designation of a budget for the citizens review panel
- The impact of a citizens review panel on the Police Department
- Identifying the best model that the City of Virginia Beach should adopt
- Other pertinent topics regarding the development of the citizens review panel.
“The most newsy piece of subpoena power is how it’d be applied, or safeguards to keep it from being misused," Monteiro said.
The recommendations are not yet ready, according to Monteiro, but must be presented to City council by the end of August.
So far, discussion centers heavily on the conditions for which the panel would be constructed and the powers they'd hold once serving.
“Absolutely looking at diversity, how do you build a diverse board, how do they get nominated, appointed? For investigation, is it authoritative review, an audit or full-on investigative body," Monteiro said.
It’s a move many hope will build trust and transparency between the Virginia Beach Police Department and the community.
Monday night, the Task Force heard both sides of the argument from the community.
Some gave ideas on how they want it to operate.
"The CRB needs to reflect the diversity in our community," said one woman.
"Meaningful disciplinary power. CRBs cannot just be advisory in its role. Left without the ability to do anything about the misconduct," agreed another.
"Virginia Beach does need an independent review panel with investigation and subpoena authority, a supporting staff and recommendation."
While others say it’s a bad idea entirely.
"I don’t want to have our police department looking over their shoulders and not making decisions they sometimes have to make very rapidly," said one Virginia Beach man.
"It would reduce the accountability of the Chief of Police for officer discipline. So, what you would have is you would have the citizen review panel deciding discipline issues and not the Chief of Police," said another speaker. "As a result of that, you would have a citizen review panel that would be imposing discipline on a one off basis, as opposed to enforcing norms of behavior, which is the situation you have now."
"We have enough checks and balances in the criminal justice system to ensure people are treated fairly," a third speaker argued.
Cameron Bertrand, an advocate for Donovon Lynch’s family, spoke on their behalf Monday night.
Lynch was killed by a Virginia Beach police officer back in April.
"More transparency and accountability will begin to heal the loss of such an outstanding life," said Bertrand, reading a letter from Lynch's father.
He said if this review panel had been put in place years ago, Lynch may still be alive today.
"It's no longer an option, like we've said several times, and it should not have taken so many lives for us to be here at the discussion point."
He said at the top of his list is subpoena power.
"If we do not see the subpoena power within citizen review panel with subpoena power, those are the downfalls. Those are the opportunities for human error."
City council has weighed the creation of a task force following several public presentations on civilian oversight of police and was in the works before Lynch was killed.
The Citizen Review Panel Task Force plans to meet again Tuesday night to discuss the proposals of each model of how the Citizen Review Board would look. That meeting is open to the public and it begins at 6:30 p.m.
Panel members now have until August 31 to make a recommendation to city council about the group's project model, budget and impact.