Former Cedar Rapids Review Board Members: CRB Not Working Effectively

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – A former Cedar Rapids review board member described her time on the council as more of a photo op than working to hold police accountable.

This follows our i9 investigation into the limited access the public has to police body camera footage. A criminology professor told us that independent police review boards are one answer to balancing public accountability with the secrecy required in police investigations. However, our i9 team found that Iowa’s police commissions are far from independent and often lack power.

Cedar Rapids started its Citizen Review Board in response to social justice protests after the killing of George Floyd. The promise was an independent oversight of police actions.

“Creating a citizen review board is a progressive step that I’m confident will help build more confidence in our police department,” former Cedar Rapids Mayor Brad Hart said of the board’s formation.

“I think everyone wanted some form of accountability,” said former CRB member India Snow-Watt.

Snow-Watt was eager to join the board, eventually serving as president and vice president until she left the board last fall, but she said she found a board ill-equipped to answer the call for accountability and oversight.

“When it was all said and done, we had an hour-long meeting every month, and there’s only so much you can do,” she said.

Beyond the growing pains of forming a new council, Snow-Watt said the council has been hampered by too much reliance on police and city staff. For example, the board only got to look into citizen complaints after internal police investigations never independently talked with the complainants, officers or witnesses.

“The police took the complaints and wrote the complaint,” she said. “It was just a summary from another officer who wrote the case summary,” Snow-Watt said.

She said the board has little power beyond approving the discipline, if any, that has already been handed out, and despite promises of access to body camera footage…

“It will have the findings of fact and evidence and access to body camera footage,” said Cedar Rapids Community Development Director Jennifer Pratt.

Snow-Watt said he never reviewed body camera footage as part of his duties. KCRG reviewed council minutes and found multiple times council members requested access to body camera footage but were denied.

“We got a lot of pushback about how the case was closed, that we should get people’s consent and they should edit the videos and blur people’s faces, and that took a while.” she said.

Instead, police would review the footage and describe it in their report to the council. Snow-Watt points to the Sonya Massey killing in Illinois, where it took just two weeks to release raw body camera footage to the public after an officer was charged with the murder, as why the Citizen Review Board should have access to the body camera footage .

“Why, if you’re not releasing it to the public, then at least an independent review board is,” she said. “Not someone who is part of the police, is seen through someone else’s eyes to be translated to someone else.”

We contacted the current council to review body camera footage of a police attack on April 6 in which one person was killed and another was injured. But instead of the board, a city spokesman responded by saying Iowa law prohibits the board from looking at specific complaints. He added that the body camera footage has not been released because it is still under investigation; even though the Cedar Rapids police chief later confirmed that the investigation had ended a few days earlier. Snow-Watt said it highlighted a lack of independence from the council.

“The idea was to oversee the police department; in the end, that didn’t happen,” she said.

The city gave us this statement regarding this story, saying the board was not legally allowed to see the body camera footage because of “Iowa’s Chapter 80F, which limits our ability to share information that would allow an officer to be identified in relation to a complaint.”

And this:

The City engaged the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE) to develop a model for our Citizens’ Review Board that follows best practices across the country while considering the unique needs of the Cedar Rapids community and guiding state laws. which information may be shared with the Citizens’ Review Board.

The goals of the Cedar Rapids Citizens Review Board are to ensure accountability for public safety, increase trust in the police, increase and improve public cooperation, and make our community safer for everyone. The powers and duties of the board are set forth in Cedar Rapids City Code Chapter 74.

In March 2022, NACOLE provided CRB with training on effective practices in conducting and reviewing investigations. The Citizens’ Review Board reviewed the Chief of Police’s reports on citizen complaints received by the Police Department beginning at the May 2022 meeting. City Attorney Vanessa Chavez attended that meeting to walk CRB members through the process and to present the details of the state laws that guide the information provided. This includes Iowa Law Chapter 80F on the Rights of Peace Officers and Public Safety and Emergency Personnel, which provides constraints on what information the Citizen Review Board can review. The Citizens’ Review Board has since reviewed several police chief reports, voting on all reports to confirm that the reviews were satisfactorily completed. These reports are all public and available in meeting packets posted online.

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