Christopher Peak photo
Police Commission Chair Tony Dawson (center): We’ll give City Hall a try.
The next police commission meeting will take place at City Hall, not at police headquarters, in a move that a leading local cop watcher called a win for transparency.
In his latest weekly email from City Hall, Mayor Justin Elicker announced Friday that the next Board of Police Commissioners won’t take place in its usual spot in the chief’s conference room on the third floor of 1 Union Ave.
Instead, it will take place in a second-floor meeting room at City Hall at 165 Church St. The meeting is scheduled for March 10 at 6 p.m.
“Since oftentimes the Police Commission plays an accountability and oversight role, many feel that having the meeting at the Police Station deters some people from attending,” Elicker wrote. “In response to these requests (that also were included in the Transition Report for my Administration), I met with Police Commission Chair [Anthony] Dawson and we jointly agreed that the Commission can host the meetings outside of the Police Station.”
Police commission meetings typically cover topics ranging from the proposed discipline of city officers to conditions at the 1 Union Ave. lock up.
Allan Appel photo
Police accountability activists Barbara Fair (right) and Patricia Kane: More people will come out to City Hall.
Dawson said that the commission has never held a meeting outside of police headquarters during his four or five years as the commission’s chair.
“Some of the community folks said that they were kind of nervous coming into the building of the police department,” he said. “So we felt that it would be nice for them to have a venue that was conductive to the community. We’re willing to try and see how it goes.”
He said the move isn’t necessarily a permanent one. He said he and his fellow commissioners and the mayor will gauge how the City Hall meeting goes and see if that’s a more appropriate location for commission meetings going forward.
“There’s nothing that we had to hide at police headquarters,” he said. “There’s nothing we’re going to hide at City Hall.”
Thomas Breen photo
Police headquarters at 1 Union Ave.
Local police accountability and transparency activist Barbara Fair praised the location move during a phone interview Friday morning. She has advocated for months for the police commission to make its meetings more accessible to the general public.
“I think that’s where it should have been from the start,” Fair said about the City Hall location. “I’m excited that our mayor used leadership skills in getting it moved.”
She said she routinely hears from people who are interested in attending police commission meetings, or otherwise want to understand more about how the latest developments in the police department, but are not comfortable going to the police department building itself.
“I don’t like coming in there,” she confessed, “but because I want to know what’s going on, I force myself to sit there.
“I sit there full of anxiety. Now I’m hoping that more people can be involved in what’s going on in the city.”
This is a great move!
Though things have gotten better down at Union Station with regards to 'citizen treatment', I have always felt there should be some kind of 'non-police' interface (like a social worker) to 'intake' IA Complaints and the like. There is a lot of trauma that walks through those doors everyday, and on the occasions I have directly witnessed, the 'uniform' and 'authority' is a hair-trigger.