Fleet, Fleet III, Priscilla and Daphne White address Boulder City Council 06/03/2014

A “Professional Standards Review Panel,” comprised of 12 members — six police department members and six volunteer community members — reviews class 1 complaints. In a recent email exchange on Boulder’s City Council Hotline (beginning on June 5), then-Interim Chief Testa explained, “Panel members review administrative investigations in addition to a review by the subject employee’s supervisory chain of command. During the panel’s review, they make written recommendations on whether the investigation was conducted fairly, completely, and reported accurately. They also make a recommendation on disposition based on the material contained in the case file.”

Testa clarified that panel decisions are advisory only, as are recommendations made by supervisors, leaving the ultimate decision to the police chief. Incidents involving criminal behavior will undergo criminal investigations and, if appropriate, go to trial.
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A panel of people from the police department and the city manager’s office interview candidates for available community positions on the professional standards review panel. The city manager makes the final selection.

The chief of police, with input from the Boulder Police Officers Association and Boulder Municipal Employees Association, selects the department panel members. Department representation on the panel consists of three commissioned officers, one commissioned sergeant and two BMEA employees.

Judd Golden, a Boulder-based lawyer and former long-time chair of Boulder County’s American Civil Liberties Union, says the current method for appointing community members means that all of the panel members are essentially appointed by the police.

“At the minimum those [community] panel members should be appointed by an entity that’s not the police force, whether that’s the city council or one of the [other city] boards,” says Golden.
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“It’s not about the chief, per se, but about oversight. That’s my perspective. Culturally, we need to make sure we have the right tools in place to manage the department,” says Weaver.

Council member Mary Young says that no member of council expressed any concern about the decision to hire internally.

“There’s a real strong culture of succession planning within the police department. Chief Beckner especially was a meticulous planner and so we’re certain he, throughout his planning, came up with some good candidates,” says Young.

Young says all misconduct by Boulder police officers has been investigated by the professional standards review panel and showed no evidence of “any systemic problem.”

Golden disagrees.

“So it seems as though, in reviewing those cases, that much of what those people were engaged in weren’t isolated instances, but seemed to be occurring in a recurring fashion, especially the evidence that came forth during the elk case shows that a lot of misconducts were just sort of winked at and it was a circle-thewagons, protect-our-own attitude until things got so extreme that it became public,” Golden says.

He adds that while the choice to hire internally or externally really depends on the situation, the city council and city manager have “glossed over” the instances of misconduct within the department.

“The concern I think the public should rightfully have is: Is there a culture within people in the department that protects their own and winks and nods at anything that isn’t a profound deviation from good conduct? Will [these candidates] support a change in that culture? Again, just putting people on trial and getting them convicted and having them quit when they get caught, that’s good. But what about all those others who are going about their ways? I’m not sure if they are getting any different message from their peers.”

Council members Young and Weaver, as well as Boulder spokesperson Huntley all say they are unaware of any citizen concern about the decision to hire a new chief internally.

“We haven’t gotten any emails on the matter at all. Not one,” says Young.

Golden says a lack of public complaint doesn’t matter.

“That is not at all how government should operate. As someone who has been involved in this issue and with the ACLU in the past, public outcry is not how governance should work,” Golden says. “The police chief and such, that’s all internally done. The public doesn’t get to vote on any of these people. So the idea of asking for an outcry, what do they want? Do they want five emails, or 10 people to show up at City Council and complain about it? Do we need to have some awful thing happen to motivate this? That’s exactly the wrong way to make good public policy.”​