A year ago, the infamous Halloween Takeover in downtown Oak Park and the mutual aid response from neighboring police departments sparked a realization that the village’s Citizen Police Oversight Committee had no framework to review reports on significant community impact incidents. Now they do.
The village board voted 6-1 at its Oct. 6 meeting to approve a recommended procedure for CPOC to identify, evaluate and respond to “incidents, patterns, or policing practices that significantly affect community trust, public safety, or public understanding of law enforcement practices,” as written in the draft framework.
Oak Park is trailblazing in yet another area as this structure is the first of its kind for any municipality, according to Luvimae Omana, a consultant with Pivot who helped create the framework.
“Our goal was to create a process that is structured enough to promote consistency, but flexible enough to recognize that critical incidents can look very different from one another,” said Omana.
The process follows a three-tier structure based on the severity of the incident and the level of review and community intervention needed.
Tier 1 starts with community education and outreach with no community impact assessment or report needed. Tier 2 focuses on high impact cases and the community can request that the board authorize a third-party community impact review which they can then analyze to make recommendations to the village board.
Tier 3 is for critical events resulting in “death, great bodily harm, or exceptional community concern.” This requires additional time as the criminal or prosecutorial review has to be completed first, then a community impact review or sentinel event review can be requested, reviews and new recommendations can be made.
A sentinel event review is under the guidance of the village board or village manager and looks at the “root causes and systemic contributing factors.” A community impact review is done externally looking at if the event was “handled according to policy, procedure and training.”
As this is such a new process, there is not a timeline requirement set, although the village board discussed implementing general guidelines once the process has been utilized and a better understanding of realistic expectations is gathered.
Kevin Barnhart, the chair of CPOC, said he does not expect “to see huge community impacts, especially at two or three level types of things happening on a regular basis,” but it is important to have the framework in place for when it does.
Trustee Brian Straw seconded the hope that the framework does not have to be used often.
“The goal of this is to ensure transparency, and that if we’re identifying any systems level issues that can be resolved, we’re resolving them, and it’s through that transparency, through that mechanism, that we can maintain public trust, and I think that’s really important and supportive of our public safety function,” said Straw.
Trustee James Taglia was the one vote against the framework. He said he is concerned it moves the committee away from just civilian oversight and into areas where “substantial professional expertise” is needed and could actually create more distrust from the perspective of police officers.
“We would not ask an unlicensed citizen commission to evaluate whether firefighters use the correct tactics inside a burning structure, whether paramedics followed a proper clinical protocol during a cardiac arrest, or whether an engineer selected the appropriate methodology for a structural analysis,” said Taglia. “Public participation and oversight are important, but technical judgments require technical expertise. Policing should not be treated differently simply because the subject matter is politically sensitive.”
Omana clarified that CPOC does not have authority over the police department or the village board, but their “role is to examine institutional issues and community impact, not to make determinations about criminal liability, administrative misconduct, or legal responsibility.”
Barnhart also confirmed that the committee is not conducting investigations or interviewing anyone involved but feels it’s important to be able to look at what is going on.
President Vicki Scaman called out any potential discomfort from village staff and the police department with the framework, wanting to address it before it could become an issue and respect perspectives from all angles.
Police Chief Shatonya Johnson briefly spoke at the meeting to answer questions on feelings around the framework.
“I think it’s important that we ensure that the men and women of CPOC are completely trained on evaluating things that can impact safety,” said Johsnon. “I think that we can collaborate.”
Village Manager Kevin Jackson also clarified that if village staff and the police department disagreed on recommendations coming from the committee, they would be able to present their perspective to the board as well.
The board has the ultimate vote over any recommended policy changes or tactics implemented, as they do with any other committee recommendations. The framework was approved, but with the expectation that clearer language on the village board and staff’s role in the approval process be added.