By David Stanczak
June 21, 2017
It’s too early to call it a slump, but the Bloomington City Council the other night whiffed on a softball issue. Although thank God it’s not finalized yet, the Bloomington City Council seemed to give its blessing to creation of a civilian oversight board for public safety (read “police”) services. The news coverage noted that most of the people at the work session supported the proposal. My experience in 18 years of municipal service is that the best feedback a public body ever gets is no feedback. Thus, it would have been shocking if people who didn’t want the board turned out in great numbers to say they were happy with the BPD.
During the entire time this proposal was under consideration, no one documented any problems with the BPD. This proposal, in light of that record, is an insult to a very capable chief of police and his staff, and to the existing civilian Board of Fire and Police Commissioners, whose functions include hiring, promoting, and disciplining police officers. All the horribles that might justify such a measure occurred elsewhere, and some of the proponents of this measure have an axe to grind; they institutionally assume that police ARE the problem. To top it off, in a move worthy of Oakland, California, the council is presumably ok with felons being on the board, except maybe for murderers.
The average cop has enough to deal with already with all the bad guys out there. If the average person were subjected to as much scrutiny on the job as a cop is now, he’d probably tell his supervisor to take the job and shove it. But this proposal would add yet another layer of scrutiny.
Just wondering: how many members of the city council have asked a Bloomington cop that they know, off the record, what they think of the proposal. It is truly a solution in search of a problem, and my prediction is that, if the board is created, the problems will soon materialize. Under the proposal, instead of going to the chief of police or anyone in command authority, anyone with a beef about a Bloomington cop can take it to the civilian oversight board, which is predisposed to look with favor on the complainant, and with a gimlet eye toward the cop or cops complained of.
The days of police departments manned by uneducated, red neck knuckle draggers has been over for at least a generation. The time when a civilian oversight board made sense is long gone, and the place for it is not here.
By the way, Normal blew it the other night on the Uptown railroad crossing; more on that next time.
David Stanczak, a Forum commentator since 1995, came to Bloomington in 1971. He served as the City of Bloomington’s first full-time legal counsel for over 18 years, before entering private practice. He is currently employed by the Snyder Companies and continues to reside in Bloomington with his family.
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