While law enforcement sees local turmoil and national scrutiny, Asheville’s police advisory board gives staff an earful about the need for public oversight
Above: Several members of the Citizens Police Advisory Board gather with city staff around tables in a training room for their Dec. 2 meeting. Clockwise from top: Debbie Applewhite, Allen Brailsford, Larry Holt, Jayden Gurney, Carol Hallstrom and Assistant City Manager Paul Fetherston.
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“We’ve never had this many people,” Jayden Gurney, chair of the city’s Citizens Police Advisory Commission, said as a trickle of citizens, activists and journalists made their way into the board’s Dec. 2 meeting. Committee members and city staffers were already clustering around plain tables in a simple training room next to the fire department’s offices.
With the Asheville Police Department Chief William Anderson departing the job amid ongoing turmoil and national events bringing greater scrutiny to the conduct of police forces, the committee became the target of somewhat more attention than before.
The board, as its title indicates, doesn’t have much official power, from its official description from the city it’s supposed to do the following:
The committee serves as a liaison between the police department and community. The committee mediates problems or conflicts and serves as an advocate for programs, ideas, and methods to improve the relationship between the police and community. The committee is also responsible for disseminating information to the community and to the government officials of Asheville.
It can have up to 13 members, though on the day in question a number of them (notably Anderson and Asheville City Council member Chris Pelly were absent). Five members represent areas of the city. There are also board seats for the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville (Gurney works there as a nonprofit operations manager), the Community Relations Council, and a police officer (Capt. Stoney Gonce in this case). Other members can be appointed to help deal with specific issues or problems.
After complaints about police misconduct in the late 2000s, some activists and citizens suggested expanding the board’s power to check the police department or forming a new entity that could have a more official role in oversight, but those suggestions failed to gain much traction, partly due to concerns about running into personnel laws and the authority of the city manager.
Nonetheless, board weighs in on matters like the process for selecting a new chief or the implementation of a three-year plan to overhaul the department, and last week, city staff and police officials got an earful from some of the board members.
After Asheville Fire Department Chief Scott Burnette, who’s serving as a liaison between city management and the APD, presented a brief update on how the plans were proceeding (the city has about 15 percent of the plans’ specific changes made), committee member Carol Hallstrom shot back that she believed the public should be more involved in the department’s reforms.
“Really, the participation involved was very limited, it was more ‘check the box’ participation,” she said of previous meetings for crafting the strategic plan. “I hope that with all the talk about how to expand relationships that will be different.”
Assistant City Manager Paul Fetherston noted that as the plan primarily deals with the operations of the police department, not all aspects of it require the public’s involvement: the plan divides areas dealing with external dealings with the public and internal management of the department.
“My suggestion is simply that that may be a bit of an artificial barrier: everything that happens touches on how the police interact with the public and how the department functions,” Hallstrom replied. “I think there are many different views in this community worth hearing from directly about the internal operations.”
Committee member Debbie Applewhite also expressed skepticism, noting that the process of surveys, consultants and public input sessions seemed like deja vu in a city that witnessed the same thing for choosing a new chief in 2011 (after Bill Hogan departed following the evidence room scandal) and in 2013 during the crafting of the strategic plan.
“I’m more than a little bit concerned,” she said. “What concerns me is that we spent all this money on consultants for this strategic plan and here come the same questions. So I’m concerned that we’re chasing our tail. When are we going to stop, raise our hands, and start doing something with these questions?”
Fetherston replied that one option was to incorporate some of the questions into a larger survey of the citizenry to “have a baseline and see where the city goes. 2015 is time for the next survey.”
“That is an option so you don’t feel that there’ survey fatigue,” he said. “That will create a baseline that’s statistically valid, that you can do something with.”
“See, we’re back to talking fancy again — I don’t think fancy gets the job done, I’m sorry,” Applewhite shot back. “Simple gets the job done.”
“The citizens survey is something that’s done every three years; I certainly don’t mean to talk fancy at all,” he replied.
“It sounds like, at a minimum here, three different surveys,” Hallstrom observed. “It also seems clear that you don’t really interact about your own surveys. It seems as a starting point it would be really useful and sensible if you knew what the others were doing or had done.”
Burnette replied that with the committee’s input in crafting questions and feedback about the process it could be improved this time around.
“Maybe a survey isn’t even the best way to do it,” Hallstrom said. “Maybe you need to have neighborhood meetings where there’s face to face interactions instead of surveys. I hope that maybe public comment would also speak to some of these issues.”
“The survey’s not intended by the police department to be the only way to communicate,” Fetherston said. “It’s just one tool; not everyone will come to the meeting.”
“When we go to a meeting and people tell me what’s good, what’s bad, what needs to change I take that more seriously than someone sitting on their tuckus at home,” Applewhite said.
Last time a chief was selected, Applewhite said later, community participation was largely missing. This time, she said, there needs to be meetings at different times and locations throughout the city. Other committee members agreed.
“It seems like one of the larger problems was the meetings were scheduled at times when people who had nine to five jobs couldn’t attend,” Gurney said. “It did seem like checking the box. Do we have community input? Great. Wonderful. Let’s move on. It wasn’t really an attempt to garner more input, but an attempt to say on a report that we’re moving forward with community support.”
“The time was an issue, the location was an issue, the attitude of the search firm was an issue,” Hallstrom added, and Applewhite agreed. “The interest in having us actually engage in any way was not present.”
This time, she said, the city needed to select the search firm far more carefully and without more public input “we’ll get the repetition of a process that was so limited in the ability of the community to participate that it was really about form over substance.”
City manager Gary Jackson is currently choosing an interim police chief, and according to the staff present is looking at a number of individuals from both the APD and around the country to occupy the job. Jackson from January to the time the new chief takes office. The formal search for a new chief begins in February (after the city hires a consultant to oversee the process) and should be completed by June, though it’s not unheard of for the selection of top staff to take longer than anticipated.
“The community input seems to be the big rub among the group,” Gurney noted, specifically noting that a meeting in public housing during this selection process is, in his view, a necessity..
Fetherston agreed that the city could hold multiple meetings, but that the issue would be timing to make sure that the meeting and community input process “didn’t hold up the recruiter” in finding a permanent police chief.
“I think we all want to see as much community input as possible; ultimately it’s the city manager that will make this critical decision,” he said. “There will be a limit to the number of meetings that we will do, and I’m not concerned at all based on what I’m hearing about how we accomplish that. It will just come down to timing.”
“Community, in the last go-round, didn’t have a lot of time, only had a two-day notice,” board member Allen Brailsford said. “If you only have a two-day notice about a meeting, it’s not very helpful. It would be good to have some time so if you have a job, you can make time to get out.”
“We all appreciate that there’s a timeframe,” Hallstrom added, turning to city staff. “But what we keep hearing over and over again is that time drives the process instead of the need to come out with a chief that works internally and externally. It concerns me.”
“It’s a balancing act,” Fetherston said. “Time is a factor. Having a vacancy for a six months is a long period of time.”
Gurney noted that having at three to four meetings — in different areas of the city — with one in public housing and at least a week’s notice, would be a better way to do things this time around. Additionally, he noted that the committee wanted a brief follow-up meeting to review the public input gathered from the other sessions to give Ashevillians a better idea of what the community as a whole wanted in a new chief, rather than the input coming through in scattered esessions.
“The group felt that was really important,” he said.
“I think that’s really important, but I would caution this group not to get ahead of the process; we have not hired a recruiter yet,” Fetherston responded. “That’s part of what we hire a recruiter to do, come up with a process and the timing. The input is really good, it’s really important, but to determine that kind of thing, that’s where I’d really rely on the recruiter.”
“I think the group’s fear though, Paul, is that we’ll hire a consultant, the consultant will say ‘I’ll get you a chief as fast as I can’ then boom,” Gurney said, snapping his fingers. “The meetings are done, it’s over before we even get there. We wanted to get ahead of the game and get our suggestions out there.”
But Fetherston replied that more public meetings about the future police chief could cause difficulties depending on where the consultant was based, “because you don’t want them travelling back and forth. It depends on where the recruiter is located, but there’s ways to do it.”
“We would be willing to share some responsibility, as appropriate, if there’s logistics,” Hallstrom replied. “This is another opportunity to demonstrate that this city and this department have some seriousness about community policing. It seems to me that the opportunity to develop a process that is in line with those statements is significant, is important, is something we’re hopefully all in agreement on.”
“The community input is important for this position,” Fetherston said. “What that looks like is something we’ll have to identify. But we can’t commit to the process right now.”
“It is essentially the city manager’s decision and will be the city manager’s decision,” Fetherston continued. “Community input throughout it both in the characteristics and the selection part will be important, and there’s ways to do that. So the community will be involved.”
“It seems that the minor cost involved in paying a consultant to drive from Atlanta or Charlotte to Asheville for another day if it met the goals of this committee would be money well spent to have those extra meetings,” Gurney replied.
“I think it’s great feedback and input,” Fetherston said. “We’ll just have to see what the proposals are.” He advised the board to put a more formalized proposal before the New Year.
From there the discussion segued into larger issues of police oversight and conduct.
“I hope this is going on across the country,” Hallstrom said. “That we’re all trying to consider how the events of the last few months, in Ferguson in particular, affect how we internally look at the work being done and how the department views its relationship with the community.” She asked if the APD would take advantage of possible federal resources for body cameras.
“It seems to me it’s appropriate for us in Asheville to be part of that reflective process” and she wondered if the department was discussing this “heightened awareness” and ready to “work with communities that may be cranky, people that may be cranky, with people who are consistently there and raising questions in legitimate ways, as well as those who aren’t, but people who are affected deeply by the power and authority police agencies have and like the police agencies want to have a safe community where there’s an element of trust and not fear.”
“In reaction to any event, global or national, we are always assessing and looking for ways to improve,” Deputy Chief Wade Wood said, comparing the ramifications of recent protests and outcry over police killings to the impact of the Rodney King verdict backlash in the early ’90s. “That affected law enforcement nationwide. We continue to have involvement with groups like this, to solicit feedback, to continue to have dialogue in various communities.”
“Every law enforcement agency’s going to have chinks in the armor, things it needs to improve,” he added. “Race relations have remained a topic of discussion since I started here in 1992 and I think will remain” but that he felt the department was taking efforts to reach out.
As for body cameras, “that’s not going to be the panacea,” and he noted that some departments were “inundated” with open records requests for videos once they had their officers wearing body cameras.
“So you’ve got to weigh all that against city input and staff input,” he said. “Do we have the assets and resources to manage that?”
Hallstrom asked how the national events had affected the implementation of the much-touted strategic plan.
“The goal is always to continously improve,” Burnette said. “As new information comes in, as best practices are refined and developed and improved, absolutely they can be incorporated.”
“It’s not stagnant,” Wood added. “Quite candidly, Ferguson is so broad — not the speicific incident but the peripheral issues it’s brought to the surface — that they’re covered in the document already.”
He did note that the APD is in the process of assessing how body cameras might work in its department, what its officers preferred and how best to manage the process.
“We’re still looking at that,” he said. “Anything can change. There’s still a gamut of unknowns about this.”
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