The Citizens’ Police Oversight Board believes that, this time, Akron City Council will agree to its proposal for the rules that will govern the body created by Akron voters in the wake of Jayland Walker’s killing in 2022.
“We had a very good development at about 3:30 this afternoon,” said CPOB member Bob Gippin at Wednesday evening’s meeting. The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 – Akron’s police union – gave its formal approval of proposed rules after the board agreed it won’t seek to enforce subpoenas of Akron police officers. The board also agreed it will only investigate officer misconduct after the police have finished an internal investigation.
The new developments may be enough to get the rules package over the hurdles put in place by key members of City Council and its Public Safety Committee.
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During the Feb. 12 Public Safety Committee meeting, Ward 7 Council Member Donnie Kammer told his colleagues he wouldn’t vote on the CPOB’s proposed rules until after the FOP approved them. “That’s how I vote. … I would like to hear from them, then I’ll make my decision,” he said.
City of Akron Deputy Law Director Brian Angeloni said on Wednesday night that he got the FOP attorney’s written approval of the new rules that the board hopes City Council will pass at its next meeting Feb. 26. The board tweaked language to the rules it presented to City Council on Feb. 12, making it explicitly, instead of implicitly, clear that FOP members will not have to comply with CPOB subpoenas.
New rules won’t allow for subpoena power
The new rules are watered down from what the board proposed to City Council in December. The board initially sought to conduct investigations of police misconduct at the same time as the department did and sought subpoena power to compel officers to testify.
That proposal was forcefully rejected by nine City Council members who sided with the FOP, which repeatedly threatened to sue, claiming those provisions violated its collective bargaining agreement.
While it may have been necessary for the board to dilute its authority to get past the FOP-friendly City Council, some board members are unhappy about it.
“The subpoena power is really vital to having us be able to do our job and do it effectively,” said CPOB member Beverly Richards at Wednesday’s meeting. “So I guess I’m curious how we got to this point that we’re willing to say we’re giving that up.”
Gippin, who was one of the most vocal proponents of parallel investigations and subpoena power before City Council rejected that proposal in December, responded: “We know for a certainty that council will again reject our rules. That’s effectively our choice and how we got there…. I think as a practical matter this is something that we should accept for now.
“The better course of action is to accept the restriction for now,” he continued, “just as we are accepting the limitation on parallel investigative authority for now, with the hopes that those may be altered, changed, negotiated in the coming collective bargaining agreement” with the police union.
Police oversight is tough all over
CPOB member Brandyn Costa took issue with the deference shown by some members of CIty Council to the police union.
“Those individuals are in positions to hold up our ability to get things done, specifically with us passing our rules,” he told Signal Akron after Wednesday’s meeting. “We were told by one member specifically that they would not entertain our rules unless they had express consent from the FOP that they were OK with the rules.
“We have really worked in good faith to try to move forward a version of the rules that we thought would be workable to everyone, but it seems to continue to be the same faction of individuals who are really just making this difficult, which hampers our ability to do the mission that we’re called to do.”
Costa concluded, “Police oversight is tough all around the country, and Akron is learning that better than anyone.”
To CPOB Chair Kemp Boyd, the new rules “don’t have enough bite we thought was entitled to us based on the charter, but the caveat of the charter is that anything that goes against collective bargaining we can’t do,” he told Signal Akron. “It’s kind of a bittersweet thing, to be quite honest with you.
“However, the sweetness of it is that the doors of communication continue to be open with City Council and the FOP. As long as we’re talking, I feel that’s a win, that’s a positive thing.… We want to get this stuff in place so we can really start doing the work we believe we should be doing.”
A big part of the work the CPOB wants to do is hire an independent police auditor to lead investigations of police misconduct. It can’t formally hire leading candidate Anthony Finnell until it has its rules package approved by City Council.
