Why Police Review Fails
PADNOS, MICHAEL D.
NATIONAL REPORTS Why Police Review Fails By Michael D. Padnos Washington On August 14, 1965, William B. Nichols and five friends, two of them Negroes, finished a late dinner and went to...
...the others have apparently withered away from disuse (and even the Rochester Board has at least temporarily stopped functioning-the victim of another FOP lawsuit...
...If no resolution is affected most cities is asked to submit a sworn and detailed description of the event and the alleged impropriety...
...He explained that the police had awakened him at his home across the street from the scene of the arrest, and persuaded him to testify in their defense, although they knew that he had been sleeping at the time of the incident...
...It has twice come under legal attack by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)-most recently in 1965, when it was enjoined from holding hearings for a period of almost six months-and it has been the target of an endless diatribe conducted by J. Edgar Hoover and John J. Harrington, President of the Philadelphia and National FOP...
...If the evidence warrants, the Chief may refer the case for immediate trial board action...
...The 1964 riots indicate that even as a "safety valve" the Board has been somewhat less than entirely successful...
...Obviously agitated, Benedict singled out Nichols, apparently because he was taller than his friends, and peremptorily ordered him to "Break it up and move on.' A mild mannered man, Nichols politely responded, "We are moving on, Officer...
...Largely as a result of the FOP'S and Hoover's attacks, the Philadelphia PAB has enjoyed considerable publicity...
...Even if Officer Benedict is eventually given a slap on the wrist, the men of the 10th Precinct know that they have the backing of Captain Gooding, and they know that the Captain has many techniques to discourage the prosecution of citizen complaints...
...His only explanation was that Nichols was under arrest for "failure to move on...
...that a Captain should be grateful when citizens come to him with their complaints instead of going to the newspapers, civil rights groups, or the streets...
...The Washington Board has no staff or budget at all, and the Philadelphia Board, with an annual budget of only $15,000, is unable to make any allocation for a program of community education, which is essential if the existence of a board is to be made known to the masses of poor people in the city...
...Although no CRB has yet made a significant contribution to the reduction of big-city tensions, there is no reason to believe that one will not do so in the future, for a good board, well staffed and funded, clearly can guarantee some civilian control over the quasi-military police forces...
...Several seem to stand out...
...Cecil Moore, the vociferous head of the Philadelphia NAACP, maintains that the NAACP has accomplished more to change the pattern of police behavior than the Board has...
...Because the police strongly object to citizen complaints, however, they have developed a number of techniques for disposing of them...
...One of Mayor Lindsay's most widely heralded initial decisions was to install Howard R. Leary as police chief, ousting John Broderick, an announced foe of the police review...
...I think they should...
...If a welldressed white man surrounded by five well-dressed friends could be arrested for chatting quietly on a public sidewalk while visiting the 10th Precinct, what liberties were the police accustomed to taking with the poor Negroes who spent their whole lives there...
...The Bob-Inn had been the site of previous complaints about noise on the street (although he later acknowledged that there was no noise on this particular night), and Benedict's Captain had specifically told him not to allow a crowd to gather there...
...Washington's Board consists of five civilians and three must side with the police in order to exonerate an accused policeman...
...There was testimony that the Negroes were not misbehaving in any manner...
...And Washington's Board, which is unable to fight for anyone more down-and-out than William Nichols, is equally isolated from the life of the city...
...Michael D. Padnos is a practicing lawyer and freelance writer now living in Washington, D. C...
...But most other people should recognize the boards as a necessary effort to solve a problem which increasingly plagues the nation's cities...
...The Commissioners took almost five months before announcing to the press that they had directed the Police Department to convene a trial board...
...By the end of its first year in June 1966, Washington's new CRB had received a total of 10 complaints, including Nichols' In the Nichols case, the Department had taken two months-from November 5 to January 11-to complete its investigation and prepare a report containing almost nothing except statements by Captain Gooding, Captain Gooding's superior, and the Chief of Police, all blandly recommending dismissal of the complaint...
...To Officer Benedict, however, his actions were entirely proper and correct...
...In eight years of operation it has received 827 complaints, held hearings on 116, and has recommended disciplinary action in 44 cases-a brief suspension in 19 ("brief" may mean one day) and a "reprimand" in 25 others...
...It cannot be a panacea...
...Moreover, the police in the 10th Precinct had not forgotten the recent riots in Watts, and were keenly aware of the similarity between Watts and their own superficially calm and pleasant Negro neighborhood...
...Washington, like almost every other city in the country, has an established mechanism for the resolution of citizen complaints against the police...
...Hoover, in a typically incisive analysis, announced after the 1964 riots in Philadelphia that he thought one of the causes of the riots was the CRB-a charge which he quickly dropped when furious city officials demanded proof...
...This particular thumbscrew, now abolished in Washington, still obtains in many cities...
...But Nichols, a television producer who was working for the War on Poverty, was appalled at the implications of the arrest...
...City officials from all over the country have visited to study the Board, and several cities have instituted boards based on the Philadelphia system...
...Any city that decides to put a CRB in action will just be beginning its battle once the Board is created, for the police and their friends can be expected to wage a constant battle against what Captain Gooding called this "idiotic approach" to community relations...
...and a witness for the police professed pangs of conscience and recanted his testimony in their behalf...
...In New York, too, where the Board has four civilian members and three policemen, a complaint can be dismissed if one of the civilian members joins with the three policemen...
...In the event "delay plus harrassment" fails, the police have one final method of discouraging complaints...
...The results of these tactics were not long in coming: Less than a month after Nichols' arrest, two 10th Precinct officers arrested several 10 year-old boys for playing football in an alley, and an angry crowd of Negroes gathered at the station...
...Neither Nichols nor his attorney anticipate a victory...
...Nichols decided to bring the incident to the attention of the Police Department...
...A "caution" serves only as a warning and has no effect on salary or promotion...
...Without another word, Officer Benedict grabbed Nichols by the collar and the seat of the pants and pushed him down the street toward the police call box...
...This time Captain Gooding appeared, presided, and began by announcing that he had heard Officer Benedict's version of the arrest: Nichols had expressly refused an order to move on, repeated "four or five times...
...Nichols' complaint, like all complaints filed with the Commissioners, was immediately forwarded to the Police Department for an investigation conducted by the captain of the accused-in this case Captain Gooding...
...and Inspector John B. Sullivan, of the Policeman's Association (Washington's counterpart of John J. Casesse, President of New York City's Patrolman's Benevolent Association), gave the familiar warning that demoralized police officers would "leave the force in large numbers...
...Ordinarily, a man illegally charged with a crime feels vindicated when the charges are dropped...
...Given all these difficulties, should cities bother to spend time, money and effort on CRB...
...In their minds, the best way to prevent 14th Street from turning into an inferno was to enforce the law strictly, and above all to break up groups in the street...
...the ACLU rejoiced...
...The procedure begins with an informal, usually oral, complaint which may be resolved in the station house by an explanation of police rules or-infrequently-by an apology for some inappropriate conduct...
...In neither case has the existence of a CRB brought any substantial change in the attitudes of the police toward citizens or citizens toward them...
...Clarence Farmer, the director of the Police Advisory Board, feels that it has not "scratched the surface" of police abuses in Philadelphia, and that most Philadelphians-as well as many policemen-do not even know of the Board's existence...
...To Nichols' companions, the arrest was outrageous...
...In New York, the CRB recommendation is wisely removed from the political pressures of the Mayor's office: The CRB there makes its recommendation directly to the Police Department...
...Or he may forward the file to Washington's own Civilian Complaint Review Board...
...But Captain Eugene B. Gooding, the commanding officer of the 10th Precinct, is an oldfashioned tough cop, and too experienced to be easily forced into making an unwise concession to an irate citizen...
...A recent American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) study revealed that 39 per cent of the complainants against police officers in Washington had been so charged, as contrasted with .003 per cent of the complainants in other kinds of cases...
...Like many other complainants, Nichols began his Odyssey through this maze of police procedures with an informal complaint...
...they left, walked slowly away down the street, and within a minute were approached by Private John Benedict, a police officer assigned to Washington's 10th Precinct...
...The New York Board is in almost every respect identical to the Washington CRB, except in some areas where the New York Board is even weaker...
...But Washington's original Board, consisting of three civilians who reviewed complaints referred to them by the Chief of Police, was entirely ineffectual until lune 14, 1965 when the District Commissioners gave it two new members, and changed Police Department procedures so as to reduce the possibility of reprisals against complainants...
...Gooding averred complete faith and confidence in Benedict, and asserted that he would not, under any circumstances, accede to Nichols' request that the officer be "cautioned" against the abuse of police authority...
...Gooding listened impassively as the head of the Police Community Relations Service and his assistant pointed out that citizens who cannot obtain satisfaction through legal procedures often turn to other avenues of protest...
...What are the lessons of Washington and Philadelphia for New York and other cities interested in CRB'S...
...Washington's Civilian Complaint Review Board (CRB) was established in 1953, five years before the establishment of the Philadelphia Board, which is widely and incorrectly regarded as the first board to be established in America...
...We're just saying goodnight and making plans to meet for a picnic in the morning...
...The CRB was neither so dilatory nor so avuncular toward the police...
...All the judges on the trial board are police officers and the precedent in Washington for a whitewash is clear: In the 1964 Mills case, the most recent trial board case based on a citizen's complaint, it was established that the officers had stopped and arrested two Negroes who were walking down the street with a white woman at 4 a.m...
...He hoped that an explanation of the incident to Officer Benedict's superior would produce an apology (for the protection of Nichols' future record) and a warning to Officer Benedict (for the protection of the more defenseless people who constitute the customary clientele of the 10th Precinct...
...Irving Ferman, its chairman, held an informal conference with Nichols on January 11, the day after he received the file...
...At 2 a.m...
...Although the Community Relations Service within the Police Department had persuaded Gooding to schedule a meeting with Nichols, when Nichols, his attorney and five witnesses arrived at the station, they learned that the meeting was "cancelled" and that there was "apparently a mix-up...
...And their anger was only partly assuaged when the District of Columbia prosecutor, after hearing the policeman's and Nichols' versions of the incident, refused to prosecute the case...
...The CRB will not solve all the police problems in today's America...
...After insistent protest from his lawyer and an apology from the Community Relations Service, Nichols was granted a second informal meeting...
...Leary was chosen primarily because as Philadelphia's Chief of Police he had cooperated effectively with the country's strongest review board...
...Had the New York system been in effect in Washington, the Nichols case would have been dismissed when the police so recommended and Nichols would have had to appeal in order to appear before the CRB...
...A complainant, for example, may find that the investigation takes many months, during which time he is given a ticket almost every time he drives his car, or his home is checked for fire hazards, or his employer is telephoned by police investigators who drop heavy hints of wrongdoing...
...No one could conclude that a board which in eight years has never once recommended dismissal of a policeman, and has recommended brief suspensions only 19 times, is rabidly anti-cop...
...The Philadelphia CRB is jurisdictionally a branch of the Mayor's office and is thus subjected to political pressure which have caused it to handle its responsibilities with the most agonizing caution...
...It also left him only one avenue of recourse-a formal complaint with Washington's equivalent to a mayor: the Commissioners of the District of Columbia...
...As a result of its actions, arrest records have been expunged in 44 cases...
...Fourth, it must be remembered that no Board, no matter how strong or weak, will ever be free of the pressures brought by the police to weaken its effectiveness...
...Philadelphia's Police Advisory Board (PAB)-so called as a concession to police sensibilities-has been in operation since 1958...
...The informal meeting taught Nichols a lesson that many complainants before him had learned: Most cops will not side with citizens against other cops...
...The result of that trial board deliberation-a crucial test on the question of Negro-white and policecivilian relationships in Washington -was that one officer was fined $100 and the other $125...
...It was located on upper 14th Street, Washington's modest version of Harlem's 125th Street...
...Two months passed before the trial board was finally scheduledfor October 14, or 14 months after Nichols' arrest...
...It need hardly be added that the staff of the CRB, and not the police department, should conduct all investigations of civilian complaint cases...
...Aside from their dress, which was conservative for 14th Street at night, there was nothing unusual about their presence, appearance or behavior when they arrived at 1:30 in time to have one beer before closing...
...But like the Washington Board, the Philadelphia Board, praised and lauded as it is by its supporters and feared as it is by police spokesmen, has made only a minor contribution to the achievement of civilian control over the police force...
...Second, no board can expect to have a meaningful impact on police practice-and on fear and mistrust of the police-unless the Board is provided with an adequate budget and a fulltime, fully functioning staff...
...Yet the Philadelphia Board's timidity has not prevented it from being a target of the hysteria of the Forces of Law and Order...
...The procedures in New York and Philadelphia are almost identical to those in Washington...
...Deeply rooted attitudes of police officials will not be changed by the existence of a CRB...
...Third, a timid Board poses no threat to the police of a city...
...The Washington Post heralded the new CRB as a "boon to police no less than to the public...
...Where all tactics fail and the complainant persists, most cities provide for "trial board" proceedings within the police department...
...Often the police underline their disapproval of formal complaints by charging the complainant with the crime of "filing a false statement...
...and that the officers falsely testified under oath that they had heard a lookout broadcast for two men resembling the two Negroes...
...It has a fulltime staff (presently a director and two clerical helpers), is empowered to recommend to the Police Commissioner that an officer be dismissed, suspended, reprimanded or exonerated, and its recommendations have been followed in every case but one...
...The lawsuits in Rochester and Philadelphia, the grinding bureaucratic slowness of Washington and the referendum in New York all serve the same end: to kill police review...
...Public confidence in police trial boards," said the Washington Post "surely will be lowered by the outcome.' Whatever the final outcome of Nichols' case, it is significant as an illustration of the workings of police review boards in general, and it casts much light on the present controversy concerning the Civilian Review Board recently established by Mayor Lindsay...
...From the wide circle of their contacts, they are usually able to produce a "witness" who is willing to swear that he observed the incident in question, and that the police behaved properly...
...On February 8, the CRB had completed its formal hearing and was prepared to recommend, after hearing all of the witnesses in the case, that a trial be convened...
...When the officers refused to let the children go, several hundred people stormed and actually took over the police station before the respected head of the Washington NAACP was able to bring the situation under control...
...Of these, only the Board in Rochester, New York, remains in existence...
...at this level, an aggrieved citizen in When this formal complaint has been filed, a more complete investigation is usually conducted in the Police Department...
...Nor is the expression of police disapproval necessarily limited to minor annoyances...
...The next step in Washington procedure is submission of the recommendation of the CRB to the Commissioners...
...The captain then makes a recommendation to his superior, who makes a further investigation and a final recommendation, this time to the Chief of Police...
...NATIONAL REPORTS Why Police Review Fails By Michael D. Padnos Washington On August 14, 1965, William B. Nichols and five friends, two of them Negroes, finished a late dinner and went to listen to some music at a bar they had recently heard of called the Bob-Inn...
...But on August 14, the only fact concerning Nichols and his friends was that an excitable cop had made an illegal and unjustified arrest...
...But even the direct order of the Commissioners did not end the delay...
...The most rabid of the Negro spokesmen will still leap to charge "brutality," and the Neanderthals on the police force will still fight against any "outside" control over their activities...
...In Washington the police have no authority to dismiss a complaint without the approval of the CRB, but in New York the police are empowered to dismiss any and all cases, the CRB serving only as an appellate board...
...First a CRB, as NYCLU director Aryeh Neier put it, "can only be a mustard plaster...
...In the period from June 1965 to June 1966, the Nichols case was the only one that the Commissioners recommended for trial board action in this city of 800,000, of which approximately half is Negro...
Vol. 49 • September 1966 • No. 18
