After a St. Anthony police officer fatally shot Philando Castile, the calls to Maplewood Police Chief Paul Schnell started rolling in. City leaders asked him: Where do we sit? Could this happen here? What are our policies?
Two weeks later, the suburban community is creating a citizen work group to review police use-of-force policies and training. It joins a relatively small but growing number of Minnesota cities with citizen oversight groups. Such boards, recommended in a national report on policing best practices, are seen as an important step to build trust between officers and the communities they serve.
High-profile police shootings, including the death of Castile, have spurred a "huge increase" in the number of cities across the country adding some form of civilian oversight, said Liana Perez, director of operations at the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. The nonprofit has worked to improve police oversight for more than two decades. In the past two years, its membership has jumped by nearly 30 percent, Perez said.
"More and more departments are realizing it's in their best interest," said Doug Bowen-Bailey, president of Duluth's Citizen Review Board. "Police chiefs are recognizing if you do it well and you do it in partnership rather than an antagonistic way … it really can be a benefit for everyone involved."
But many people question the effectiveness of review commissions in Minnesota. In 2012, state legislators passed a law barring the commissions from imposing discipline on police or making determinations about complaints against officers. The groups can only offer recommendations about whether a complaint should be sustained and an officer disciplined.
Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, is on a quest to undo those limitations and require that every local government that oversees a law enforcement agency establish a citizen oversight council. St. Paul NAACP President Jeff Martin is not optimistic that Dibble's proposed legislation will pass. But if it did, he said it would completely alter the role of oversight boards like the one in St. Paul.
"[The review commission] would actually mean something," Martin said. "It's more symbolic than anything right now."
21st‑century policing
Dibble said he is using the report from President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing as a guide for his proposed legislation.