Civilian Review

Anditu Siwatu has barely a gray hair in the braids that cascade majestically down below her shoulders. She's 61 now, 30 years older than when she joined the Black Panther Party, partially to protest police misconduct. "I've always spoken out about people being mistreated," she said, sitting in her Northwest Baltimore home. Today Siwatu is president of the local chapter of the National People's Democratic Uhuru Movement. The 8-year-old organization is based in Chicago and led by Akua Njeri, the widow of slain Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, who was killed as he lay in a stupor (an FBI informant had drugged him)

Once a month in a conference room on the ninth floor of the Equitable Building on North Calvert Street, a small group of regular citizens from around Baltimore huddles over piles of complaints filed against Baltimore police officers. The public is invited, though the public rarely attends. No one did at the meeting Thursday evening. Discussions are intentionally vague; the agenda is cryptic, with only an occasional hint of what a case is about, who was involved and where it occurred. Board members appointed by the mayor and approved by the City Council review internal affairs reports, but those documents don't get distributed beyond the board's inner circle.

As a member of the Howard County Citizens Advisory Council for Public Safety, I must reply to Michael James' article, "Panel rejects proposed civilian review board for police" (The Howard County Sun, Sept. 15).The article is replete with misinformation, quotes taken out of context and innuendo regarding the competence and integrity of thecouncil. It fails to give your reader an in-depth analysis of the extensive amount of research that is the basis for the council's findings.At the 25 meetings held by this council, the council was presented with much information and expertise, both pro and con, concerning the operation, methods of appointment, success and failure of civilianreview boards throughout the United States.

Senate Republicans' vote proposals fail Senate lawmakers engaged in a grueling partisan debate yesterday over voting procedures for the fall elections. Republicans unsuccessfully sought to adopt measures they said would safeguard against fraud, while Democrats accused the GOP of trying to suppress voter turnout. The Senate adopted legislation to provide more polling places on college campuses, sending it to the governor's desk. But the most heated discussion was over a flurry of amendments offered by Republicans that opened a broader debate over the state's voting policies.

In the wake of the Rodney King morality play in Los Angele comes an idea that proponents say will effectively restore community confidence in law enforcement. Opponents say it will politicize the issue and, possibly, damage a police department's internal discipline.To an extent, both sides may be right.On a national level, a civilian-controlled review process for police misconduct complaints is a growing trend -- one that has not gone unnoticed in Baltimore, where a majority of City Council members have sponsored a resolution seeking a new Citizens Review Board.

Protesters called for the creation of a civilian review panel yesterday to investigate new evidence that unexpectedly cleared a white Baltimore police officer last week in the 1993 fatal shooting of a black teen-ager."

LAST SUNDAY'S column reported about charges by retired Baltimore City police Officer Walter Holtz that gamblers and numbers runners made routine payoffs to cops during his years on the force. Holtz further claimed that he was bounced from the force for reporting the corruption.The column mistakenly identified Walter Holtz as Ken Holtz. But three men who served with Holtz read the column and said that while they didn't call him Ken, they didn't call him Walter either."He was a stick man," charged retired Officer Gene Brukiewa, who was twice named Baltimore City Policeman of the Year.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Police officers in this city are, willingly or unwillingly, part and parcel of the process of civilian review. A five-member board of civilians known as the police commission runs the department, handing out discipline and picking the chief.An Office of Citizen Complaints investigates allegations of police misconduct and prosecutes officers before a hearing of the commissioners if the allegation is sustained. Officers must make statements to the OCC as part of the investigation, but their statements can't be used against them later in criminal or civil proceedings.

A CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT board for the Annapolis Police Department may diffuse the current hostility of the city's African American community toward the police, but that would be the wrong reason to create one.If city officials want citizens to intervene in police department affairs and discipline, they must have very sound rationale.Annapolis has not always had a professionally run department with properly trained, competent officers. At times in the past, a civilian review board was needed to curb blatant abuses of civil rights.

LEONARD HAMM, City College Class of 1967, now sits in an office in the basement of a building that once housed students at his alma mater's archrival: Polytechnic Institute.In 1966 and 1967, Hamm played for a City basketball squad that won 40 straight games and is ranked as one of this town's best ever. Sitting in a chair in that office, he's older, heavier, grayer now. But he's the chief of police for Baltimore's public schools. It's a job he took after spending 22 years on the city's police force.

Trying to ease fears about police tactics, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley publicly introduced yesterday an oversight committee staffed with residents who will scrutinize officers' behavior. The Civilian Review Board has subpoena power and a private investigator. Though its decisions are not binding, O'Malley said his choice for police commissioner, Edward T. Norris, will take recommendations seriously. The 11-member board was established by the General Assembly last year, before O'Malley was elected.

State legislators who helped create Baltimore's police Civilian Review Board said yesterday that they intend to amend the legislation to shorten the term of the board's first members from three years to six months. The change would counter City Council's approval Monday of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's seven nominations to the review board, created this year to monitor police misconduct.The state legislators who helped get the measure passed in Annapolis complained that Schmoke failed to open the appointment process to all residents and that three of his nominees were recommended by police.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who leaves office next month, won a legislative battle last night in the City Council, which voted to approve his seven appointments to the Civilian Review Board.A group of state legislators that helped create the panel to oversee Police Department actions had asked the council to reject Schmoke's citizen appointments.The legislators -- led by Sens. Clarence M. Mitchell IV, Joan Carter Conway and Ralph M. Hughes and Del. Nathaniel T. Oaks -- complained that Schmoke failed to open the appointment process to all citizens and that many of the nominees were recommended by the police.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke lashed out yesterday at state lawmakers for attempting to block his nominations for the police civilian review board, saying that their criticism of his selection process was "politics dressed up to look like principle.""I think they're doing the whole civilian review process a great disservice," Schmoke said. "I do not intend to submit a new group. I will let the next mayor do that."I will tell him that he would come under severe pressure to appoint people that they like.

At a hearing on police brutality in West Baltimore yesterday, Martin Luther King III vowed to continue collecting victim testimony until Congress takes action to end such abuse. The meeting at Union Baptist Church, in the 1200 block of Druid Hill Ave., was the seventh in a string of national hearings. The first was held in Atlanta on April 4, the 31st anniversary of the assassination of King's father, civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "Our purpose here is to hear the victims.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Police officers in this city are, willingly or unwillingly, part and parcel of the process of civilian review. A five-member board of civilians known as the police commission runs the department, handing out discipline and picking the chief.An Office of Citizen Complaints investigates allegations of police misconduct and prosecutes officers before a hearing of the commissioners if the allegation is sustained. Officers must make statements to the OCC as part of the investigation, but their statements can't be used against them later in criminal or civil proceedings.

The Baltimore City Council introduced a resolution last night supporting a civilian police review board.Baltimore Democratic State Sen. Ralph M. Hughes introduced legislation last month that would create an 18-member panel to examine the conduct of police officers. Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who has opposed previous efforts to create the board, is supporting the legislation that would give the board subpoena power to call witnesses, gather documents and discipline officers.Southwest Baltimore Councilman Norman A. Handy Sr. introduced the resolution last night.

About 30 people turned out at a meeting last night to renew calls for a civilian review board in Baltimore to investigate allegations of police misconduct -- an idea proposed most recently last year after an officer fatally shot a knife-wielding man near Lexington Market."

A bill to give Baltimore residents a new forum to hear complaints of police misconduct was overwhelmingly approved by the House of Delegates yesterday.Several supporters of the proposed civilian review board hailed the 120-18 vote as a sure sign that after years of trying, they would deliver to Baltimore residents a neutral setting where complaints about police behavior could be aired."I've very pleased with the House vote," said Sen. Clarence M. Mitchell IV, a Baltimore Democrat who has been a strong advocate for the bill.