The city of Aurora launched a police review board in 2005 in an effort to provide a system of redress for residents who had come to distrust law enforcement.
Tensions have been on the rise in the city’s African-American community in the wake of several questionable shootings and violent confrontations with police. It’s laudable that city officials have tried to provide an extra layer of accountability, but the fact that the board operates in secret has undercut the effort.
The Incident Review Board, which is made up of four police officers and four civilians, issued an opinion this week after meeting for two days in the case of a confrontation that a disabled woman and her daughter had with an off-duty Aurora police officer. The board found the officer had done nothing wrong. Even so, city officials said Thursday they would make policy changes as a result of the incident.
The confrontation took place last June in a King Soopers parking lot. Loree McCormick-Rice has said the officer challenged her to show him her car’s disabled placard. She described an escalation that involved the officer’s using a harsh racial epithet against her (she is African-American) and him grabbing her 12-year-old daughter and breaking her collarbone.
A surveillance video of the encounter outraged community leaders, who have called for the officer’s firing.
The first problem with the board emerged when McCormick-Rice didn’t testify. She feared police would use her words to make a criminal case against her, and in fact they had filed several misdemeanors against her, which later were dropped. Also, the public has not heard from Sgt. Charles DeShazer. His lawyer has denied the officer used a racial epithet or did anything wrong, but has said little else. However, DeShazer apparently gave an emotional description of the encounter before the review board. But we don’t know what he said because the proceedings were secret.
If any progress is to be made in building community trust, it’s imperative the public hear an officer’s account in these situations, and a person with grievances feels comfortable enough to testify.
Aurora city leaders acknowledge the board’s closed hearing rule was a compromise to appease police union leaders. In order to compel officers’ testimony in an open proceeding, the city charter would have to be changed. We think Aurora leaders ought to strongly consider such a move in order to improve relations between law enforcement and the city’s minority communities.
