Former members of the Cedar Rapids Review Board: The CRB isn’t operating efficiently

Cedar Rapids, Iowa – A former member of the Cedar Rapids Review Board called her tenure there more of a picture opportunity than a means of holding law enforcement officials responsible.

This follows our i9 inquiry into the public’s restricted access to police body camera footage.
According to a criminal professor, independent police review boards are a good way to strike a balance between the requirement for police investigations to remain secret and public accountability. Nevertheless, our i9 team discovered that Iowa’s police boards are frequently helpless and far from independent.

Following George Floyd’s murder, Cedar Rapids established the Citizen Review Board in response to social justice demonstrations. An impartial oversight of police activities was promised.

Regarding the establishment of the board, former Cedar Rapids mayor Brad Hart stated, “I’m confident that creating a citizen’s review board is a progressive step that will help build more trust in our police department.”

“Everyone, I believe, wanted some kind of accountability,” stated India Snow-Watt, a former member of the CRB.

Before leaving the board last fall, Snow-Watt expressed her eagerness to join and eventually serve as chair and vice chair. However, she claimed to have found the board unprepared to handle the demands for accountability and monitoring.

“After all was said and done, you can only accomplish so much,” she remarked. “We had an hour meeting every month.”

Snow-Watt stated that the board was hindered by an excessive dependence on the police and city employees, in addition to the growing pains of assembling a new board. For instance, the board was only able to assess citizen complaints following internal police investigations; complainants, officers, or witnesses were never consulted on an independent basis.

She stated, “The police took the complaints and wrote the complaint.” Snow-Watt clarified, “It was just a summary from another officer that wrote up the summary of the case.”

She claimed that despite assurances of access to body camera footage, the board’s only real authority was to endorse any discipline that had already been applied.

Director of Community Development for Cedar Rapids Jennifer Pratt stated, “That will have the findings of facts and evidence and access to body camera footage.”

Snow-Watt stated that it was never her responsibility to evaluate body camera footage. Upon reviewing the board minutes, KCRG discovered that there were several instances in which board members asked to view body camera footage but were turned down.

“We encountered a lot of resistance regarding the closed case, stating that we needed permission from individuals and that editing the videos would require them to obfuscate people’s faces, which required time,” she added.

Rather, the police would examine the video and provide a description of it in the board report. Snow-Watt cites the Illinois killing of Sonya Massey as an example of why the Citizen Review Board ought to have access to body camera footage, citing the two-week turnaround time between the shooting and the public release of the raw tape following the officer’s murder charge.

“Why, at least an independent review board is releasing it to the public if you aren’t,” she said. “It’s being interpreted to someone else through the eyes of someone else, not someone who works for the police.”

Regarding the examination of body camera evidence from a police shot on April 6th that left one person dead and another injured, we contacted the current board. However, a city representative answered on behalf of the board, stating that Iowa law prohibited the board from reviewing particular complaints. Even though the Cedar Rapids Police Chief subsequently verified that the investigation had concluded days earlier, he continued, saying that the body camera footage was not being disclosed because it was still being investigated. That demonstrated the lack of independence from the board, according to Snow-Watt.

“In the end, that didn’t happen; the point was to have oversight over the police department,” the speaker stated.

In response to this article, the city sent us a statement stating that “Iowa Chapter 80F, which constrains our ability to share information that would allow for an officer to be identified in relation to a complaint” prevented the board from legally viewing the body camera footage.

And that:

The National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE) was enlisted by the City to create a model for our Citizen Review Board that incorporates national best practices along with the particular requirements of the Cedar Rapids community and state laws governing what information can be shared with the board.

The objectives of the Cedar Rapids Citizen Review Board are to guarantee public safety accountability, enhance public trust in law enforcement, promote and enhance public collaboration, and create a safer city for everybody. Chapter 74 of the City of Cedar Rapids Municipal Code outlines the board’s responsibilities and authority.

The CRB received training from NACOLE on efficient methods for carrying out and evaluating investigations in March 2022. Since their meeting in May 2022, the Citizen Review Board has been examining the reports submitted by the Police Chief concerning the complaints from citizens that the Police Department has received. Vanessa Chavez, the city attorney, was present at the meeting to explain the procedure to the CRB members and go over the nuances of the state legislation that serve as the foundation for the data presented. Among the laws pertaining to the rights of peace officers, public safety officials, and emergency personnel is Iowa Chapter 80F, which places restrictions on the kind of data that the Citizen Review Board is permitted to examine. Since then, the Citizen Review Board has examined a number of the Police Chief’s reports and cast votes on each one to ensure that the reviews were finished to their satisfaction. All of these reports are accessible to the public and can be seen in the online meeting packets.