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HomeMy WebLinkAbout03-30-1999 ArticlesNEw YORK TIMES Monday, March 1, 1999 Meriden, Conn., formed a SWAT team in IN6, when crack caused a., sharp increase in drug dealing. Soldiers of the By TIMOTHY EGAN ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Late on a chilly October night three years ago, Larry Harper told his family that life was no longer worth living and headed out the door with a - handgun. He had slipped back to using crack co- caine after being in drug treat- ment and was ashamed to face his wife and brother. The family called the Albuquer- que police for help. In response, a paramilitary unit, nine men clad in camouflage and armed with auto- matic rifles and stun grenades, stormed into the park where Mr. Harper had gone in despair. "Let's go get the bad guy" were the last words Hope Harper heard as the Special Weapons and Tac- tics squad brushed by her on a Drug War. R CRACK'S LEGACY Second of two articles. hunt for her husband, leaving the family in the dark at the edge of the park Police marksmen chased Mr. Harper through the woods, found him cowering behind a juni- per _tree and shot him to death from 43 feet away. He had commit- ted no crime and had threatened only himself. The police said the fact that he was holding a gun made him a target. The case of Mr. Harper proved to be the one that broke the Albu- querque SWAT team. His family sued. And last fail, the city disman- tled the squad as a full-time unit and paid the family $200,000 in an e main on Duty out -of -court settlement. Why a city of 400,000 would need a full-time paramilitary unit is a question that should have been asked years ago, said the new po- lice chief, Jerry Galvin. The an- swer, a decade ago, would have been crack cocaine and the heavily armed gangs fighting over the crack trade. But what started as a response to the violent front of the war on drugs has evolved, here and in cities across the nation, into a new world of policing. Special weapons and tactics squads, once used exclusively for the rare urban terrorist incident or shootout, transformed themselves through the crack years into ev- eryday parts of city life. In large Continued on Page A16 Have -Remained on Duty Continued From Page Al urban areas, paramilitary units now do ev- erything from routine street patrols to nightly raids of houses. Even small towns have formed paramilitary police units. The Cape Cod town of Harwich, Mass., popula- tion 11,000, for example, has trained a 10- member SWAT team. Encouraged by Federal grants, surplus equipment handed out by the military and seizure laws that allow police departments to keep much of what their special units take hi raids, the Kevlar-helmeted brigades have grown dramatically, even in the face of plummeting crime figures. "It is the militarization of Mayberry," said Dr. Peter B. Kraska, a professor of criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky Uni- versity, who surveyed police departments nationwide and found that their deployment of paramilitary units had grown tenfold since the early 1980's. "This is unprecedent- ed in American policing and you have to ask yourself, what are the unintended conse- quences?" It was the escalation of the drug war that brought military -style policing into most American cities. The police felt outgunned and underarmored against gangs. But now that the worst violence associated with the gang and crack wars of the 80's has faded, the police buildup has remained and, in many cases, escalated. Some police officers say the expansion of SWAT into a role as the fist of the drug war and beyond is good police work. With proper ,training, these units should reduce loss of life, not add to it, they say. And some .communities plagued by violence and turf battles over drugs say they welcome a para- military presence in their neighborhoods. During a routine SWAT patrol in a poor neighborhood in Fresno, Calif., Sgt. Randy Dobbins said: "You look at the way we're dressed and all these weapons and this helicopter overhead. We could not do this if ipeople in the community didn't support us. Some people are afraid to be seen with us, but a lot of others come out and cheer us when we show up." Professor Kraska found that nearly 90 percent of the police departments he sur- veyed in cities of over 50,000 people had paramilitary units, as did about 75 percent of the departments of communities under 50,000. In South Bend, Ind., the police have used SWAT teams to serve warrants on small- time marijuana dealers. In St. Petersburg, Fla., the teams were deployed, to consider- able criticism, to insure order during a civic parade. Dressed in black or olive camouflage known as battle dress uniforms, the para- military squads use armored personnel car- riers, stun grenades and Heckler & Koch MP5's, which are submachine guns adver- tised to police departments with the line, "From the Gulf War to the Drug War — battle proven." When, earlier this month, New York po- lice officers fatally shot a West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo, firing 91 bullets at the unarmed man, it was viewed by some critics as a logical consequence of a police department that views patrolling cer- tain neighborhoods as war duty. In other cities, Professor Kraska found, most departments eventually used their paramilitary units beyond their original mission, and that was when they got into trouble. And the Harper family, which comes from a line of law -enforcement officers, says that is precisely what happened in Albuquerque. Mr. Harper, a 33-yearald plumber, was one of 32 people killed by Albuquerque offi- cers in the last 10 years, 11 of them by the. !. SWAT team. The police here have killed more people than any other department of its size in the nation. Some police chiefs and academics ac- ' knowledge the enormous growth of paramil- itarypolice but dispute the criticism of how they are used. The National Tactical Offi- cers Association said 96 percent of raids ended with no shots fired. "You want people who are highly trained and highly disciplined," said David Klinger, a professor of sociology at the University of Houston, who is studying SWAT teams. "It makes sense tome for Bubba Bob the ;'sheriff to have on his staff a couple of guys or girls who have been through extensive tactical training," Professor Klinger, a for- mer Los Angeles police officer, added. "But if what you have is some cowboy idiot who wants to be the tough guy, that doesn't help anybody." Most of the squads stay in existence be- cause there is too much incentive not to, police officers say. Forfeiture laws passed by Congress at the height of the crack scare were designed to take the profit out of drug dealing; assets like cars, boats, guns and cash can be seized, regardless of whether the person who owns them is later convict- ed. But the laws have given the police a certain profit motive for fighting drugs, because their departments can use what they seize to subsidize their budgets or to buy extra equipment. And since the end of the cold war, the military's giveaway of surplus hardware has proved irresistible to many SWAT teams. An amphibious armored personnel carrier was just picked up by the Boone County Sheriffs office in Indiana, and bayo- nets were recently accepted, then rejected, by the police in Los Angeles. "I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted," said Nick Pastore, former Police Chief of New Haven. "I turned it all down, because it feeds a mind -set that you're not a police officer serving a community, you're a soldier at war." I if= raarut Police in Armor, Residents on Bikes War is the word most often used in Fresno, a depressed city of about 400,000 people in the in Joaquin Valley. In Fresno, more than in any other city, paramilitary police have be- come a part of everyday life. On a night when the moon was full and night temperatures so cold that the oranges on the trees held a wisp of frost, the Fresno SWAT squad, called the Violent Crime Sup- pression Unit, was back in familiar territo- ry: the poor and largely black section of town known as the Dog Pound where drug dealing is concentrated. "You wouldn't believe what this place used to be like," said Sergeant Dobbins, leading a group of camouflaged officers on their night- ly patrol. "People were prisoners of their homes. Policenfficers were shot at routinely. The bad guys had no fear." An 11-year veteran, Sergeant Dobbins is crew cut and amiably candid. He is proud of the fact that crime has fallen in Fresno, as elsewhere. Like other members of the unit, he has a semiautomatic Beretta pistol, a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun and a 12-round shotgun called the "Street Sweep- er" at his disposal. Since its start, the Fresno unit has tried to recruit ethnic minorities, though it remains overwhelmingly white. The 34-member unit has access to two helicopters equipped with night -vision goggles and people -detecting heat sensors, an armored personnel carrier with a turret and an armored van that serves — a portable headquarters. he armored personnel carrier, a gift rrom the military with the words "FRESNO SWAT" brightly painted on it, is used mainly to serve drug warrants in potentially danger- ous situations. "A lot of people don't like the perception," Sergeant Dobbins said. "They wonder why the heck does the Police Department need this kind of equipment. But you can't under- stand what it's like to be shot at, and what a difference it makes when you're in one of these." On this night, the neighborhood was rela- tively quiet. Two pedestrians were stopped and searched for drugs. A car with a missing headlight was stopped, its driver handcuffed and told to sit on the sidewalk while the trunk was searched. Nothing was found. Several cars from the unit went on a high-speed chase of a stolen car. The occupants, tracked by dogs, dashed from the car and were chased through several yards but escaped. Pointing to a small house behind a high fence, said to be a drug haven, Sergeant Dobbins said, "We've raided this house five times." Drugs, mostly crack cocaine, are what keep the Violent Crime Suppression Unit in business. People are stopped for minor offenses, on the suspicion that they can be arrested for possessing drugs or having outstanding warrants. "I'd say anyone we're going to find milling id here is usually involved with crack or high on crack," said Gunther Meiss, a for- mer Los Angeles police officer now with Fresno's SWAT squad. He described his work as "a lot of fun." Most of the young men seen on the neigh- borhood streets were riding bikes. "That's what has happened to a lot of the drug dealers," Sergeant Dobbins said "We've im- pounded their cars." People in the community seemed to accept all the action, the police lights, the constant presence of screeching tires and barking dogs that sound like firecrackers, as the price of a certain kind of peace. City officials say they have received very few complaints from citizens, and random interviews con- firmed that. "There used to be drug addicts every- where," said Lydia COvarrabf0, who has lived in Fresno for 30 years, speaking as officers with dogs chased two people through backyards in her neighborhood. In 1994, Fresno had a record 85 homicides and 2,810 robberies, and officers were fired at a dozen times. Gangs selling drugs were blamed for the crime spike. "There was a real sense that the bad guys had control of the streets," said the Fresno Police Chief, Ed Winchester. "We were des- perate. But we certainly could not have deployed heavily armed SWAT -like units without the support of the community." The unit became a permanent part of the department the following year, in 1995. In four years, crime has fallen dramatically, matching the plunge across the nation. Mr. Winchester said the paramilitary units de- served part of the credit, though he acknowl- edged other factors. The drop in crime raises a question about how long the city needs to keep paramilitary patrols on the Streets. "If we pulled out, the drug dealers would come back with a vengeance," said Lieut. Greg Coleman, the unit commander. "Drug dealers are replaced right away. If you ar- rest one, there's another to take his place." So they are left with each other, the men with submachine guns and helicopters, and the drug dealers on bicycles,. in what the police say is a ceaseless struggle. The Message Small Arrests Show Who Is in Control With a population of 57,000, Meriden, Conn., does not fit the image of an urban crime nightmare. But in Meriden, as in Fresno, crack and other drugs prompted adesperate move to create a special paramilitary unit. Meriden formed its SWAT team in 1986, when crack cocaine was starting to appear all over America. The unit has 29 members who are used nearly full time. Other small cities and towns have SWAT -trained officers but use them only occasionally. "Street -level drug dealing just took off with crack," said Lieut. Steve Lagere, who heads the Meriden SWAT team. 'We could pull up to the projects and have five youths selling drugs at one time, right out in the open." Now in Meriden, as in Fresno, the team arrests people for minor offenses, attacking small crimes as a way to send a larger message about who is in control. About 90 percent of the unit's deployments, -Lieuten- ant Lagere said, involve drug -related work, primarily in the city's housing projects and surrounding neighborhoods, which tend to be black and Hispanic. Professor Kraska's survey found that paramilitary units in small and medium sized communities were most often used to knock down the doors of houses to search for drugs. The police acknowledge the change in du- ties. Some shrug; othersare alarmed "I don't think it was intended to be used this way," Lieutenant Lagere said. But a well - trained tactical squad can better serve a drug warrant in a potentially dangerous situ- ation than a community police officer can, he added. "The way I look at it is, my officers are not of the military, shoot -first assault style," he said. "We have a different attitude. We're going to use everything we can to insure there is little violence. And we don't care if we're dealing with the lowest vermin in the street, it's 'yes sir, no sir.' We never dehu- manize these people." Over all, crime is down about 30 percent in the past five years, Lieutenant Lagere said But when asked if the original purpose of establishing the paramilitary unit had been met — to reduce heavy drug use and dealing, by maintaining a heavy show of force — he said he was less sure. Like most police officers interviewed in the trenches of the drug war, he expressed a sense of futility. "We ought to be looking at some other option," he said "It's politically incorrect to say that as a cop. You really can't discuss it much here, because people will think you're soft on drugs. But I don't see crack use going up or down, no matter what we've tried to be„ Down the Quinnipiac River from Meriden, the city of New Haven has been through a similar scourge of drugs and violence. And in the last five years, it has also seen crime rates fail dramatically. But the city did not expand the role of its rarely used SWAT team. Instead, the police say, they brought the crime rate down by rejecting the milita- rized approach. "I had some tough -guy cops in my depart- ment pushing for bigger and more hard- ware," said Mr. Pastore, who was the Police Chief from 1990 to 1997. "They used to say, 'It's a war out there.' They like SWAT be- cause it's an adventure." New Haven, a city of 130,000, emphasized community policing, making officers walk the beat on city streets or in housing projects. "The approach you take creates a mind -set," Mr. Pastore said. "If you think everyone who uses drugs is the enemy, then you're more likely to declare war on the people.,, Lieutenant Lagere, in Meriden, said his town used both community policing and a heavy SWAT presence. The SWAT team has never killed anyone, he said. But other police officers argue that using paramilitary squads for assaults, sweeps and raids in. creases the likelihood of accidents or shoot- ings. They point to two cases in New England. hen the SWAT team in Fitchburg, Mass., stormed an apartment looking for a drug dealer in December 1996, it ended up gutting an entire apartment house. A stun grenade, designed as distraction, flashed in a predict- able burst but also ignited a sofa, which grew into a fire that consumed the apartment house. Six officers were injured, and 24 peo- ple were left without a home. In another case, a SWAT team's drug raid on the wrong apartment in Boston led to the death of a minister, the Rev. Accelyne Wil. liams, from a heart attack. A settlement with Mr. Williams's widow cost the city $1 million. The Evolutlon Less Militaristic And More Selective As small and midsized cities expand the reach of their drug -fighting paramilitary squads, the nation's original SWAT team, in Los Angeles, has gone in the opposite direc- tion. The unit that introduced the term SWAT into }popular culture was formed in 1966„ largely in response to a fear of urban terror- ism and riots. Over the years, the Los Ange- les squad became notorious for its constant lhelicopter presence, its assault -style raids and the battering rams connected to its armored carriers. "The idea back then was a lot more mBita- ristic, " said Officer Eduardo Furies, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police De- partment. Now the 67-member team reacts to extremely violent situations, ratherthan carrying out assaults. It is rare for it to be called out on suicide threats or drug war- rants, unless there is a strong likelihood of gunfire, Mr. Furies said. "It's not like you see on those TV shows li ke'Cops' or in.the movies," Mr. Funes said "The philosophy is to have a well -trained, well -armed group of police officers who can respond and back up other officers in dan- gerous situations." What fed the expanding role of SWAT teams across the country were the forfeiture laws that allow the police to keep much of what they take in raids. There are no figures on the total amount of property seized by all police departments nationwide, but the Fed- eral Government seized more than $4 billion in assets from 1986 to 1996. Critics say that the more police depart- ments conduct forfeiture raids, the more they come to rely on them. "I call them forfeiture junkies," Mr. Pastore said The Supreme Court has upheld the forfei, ture laws, but at least four states, including California, have changed the statutes so th [ a conviction is required bet�re the police can keep the property. Surplus military gear has also flooded into SWAT squads' lockers. Between 1995 and 1997 alone, the Department of Defense gave police departments 1.2 million pieces o1 mili- tary hardware, including 73 grenade launch- ers and 112 armored personnel carriers. - But Professor Klinger, who patrolled the streets of South Central Los Angeles before he became a scholar on police behavior, said he does not think the raids ultimately do much to curb drug use. "We should legalize drugs, and law en- forcement should get out of the business of treating drugs as a crime problem," Profes- sor Klinger said "This is not an unusual position in the tactical squad community." The Alternatives Measuring Success By Those Who Live When Sam Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, reviewed killings by the Albuquer- que police, he was stunned. "The rate of killings by police was just off the charts," said Professor Walker, who was hired by the city to study the department "They had an organizational culture within their SWAT team that led them to escalate situations upward, rather than de-escalat- Ing„ That is precisely what happened to Larry Harper, his family believes. At the time the police shot him, cowering behind a tree, he wanted to live and was ready to go home, said his brother James Harper. "I keep thinking of my brother crying out, 'Leave me alone, I haven't done anything,' and their response, which was to kill him," Mr. Harper said Mr. Galvin, the Albuquerque Police Chief, also saw a need for change after he was hired last year. "I did away with the SWAT team," Chief Galvin said in an interview. "We have SWAT capability, because I think it is a necessary function of any police de- partment. But there is no longer a full-time unit in place." Most drug raids, suicide calls and other types of volatile police actions do not need a full paramilitary response, he said "if you have a mind -set that the goal is to take out a citizen, it will happen," Chief Galvin said "A successful intervention for us now is one where nobody gets killed." ' In. Dallas, the paramilitary unit has been taken off most drug raids, which are carried out instead by the narcotics squad In Seattle, the SWAT team is also out o1 the business of drug raids and suicide calls. Nor do the Seattle police use a helicopter. But in Fresno, or Meriden, or Champaign, Ill., where the SWAT teams serve most of the drug warrants, there are no plans to retreat. The officers in camouflage and helmets, carrying MP5's and Street Sweeper shot- guns, are part of Ftte night. Boston's Police Solution By Orlando Patterson and Christopher Winship CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Asthe current furor over New JIL York City policing has shown, African - Americans today face few dilemmas morepainful than the tension between the need to safe- guard their neighborhoods and the need to safeguard their rights. All too often, however, both critics and defenders of the police have por- trayed this tension as a stark choice, in which lowering urban crime rates necessarily requires the kind of polic- ing that makes civil rights advocates and community leaders cry foul. Not so. Consider the case of Boston, where the homicide rate has fallen 77 percent since 1990 — 5 percentage points more than in New York Boston began its successful attack on crime, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, by employing the tactics adopted later in New York City under Mayor Rudolph GiulianL And as in New York, while crime went down, relations between the police and Afri- can -Americans worsened. In 1989, the high -profile murder of Carol Stuart — a pregnant white woman — created a wave of terror, as the Boston police descended on inner-city neighborhoods in their search for a "young black male" suspect. Mrs. Stuart turned out to have been murdered by her own hus- band, who had fabricated the descrip- tion. The police tactics in the Smart investigation, along with the stop - and -frisk policies of the Citywide Anti -Crime Unit here, provoked such outrage among African -Americans that the city was forced to disband the unit and change its strategy. Boston's new approach to law en- forcement has involved collaboration between the police and probation de - Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard is the author of "Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centu- ries." Christopher Winship, chair- man of the Harvard sociology de- partment, is co-author of a forthcom- ing work on youth violence tft Boston. partments, a focus an getting guns off the streets and, most important, a close partnership with community leaders, especially a group of black clergymen known as the Ten -Point Coalition. This partnership is key in explaining why Boston has reduced crime even more than New York, and with much less ethnic friction. The partnership rests on four prin- ciples. First, inner-city violence should be dealt with primarily as a crime problem, rather than as a symptom of poverty, poor schools, broken families and the like. Second, there is agreement that only a small percentage of youths are at the core of the problem and that the communi- ty can help to identify them. Third, the community leadership should have an informal say in the decision How New York might defuse current tensions. to arrest certain teen-agers (for in- stance, in cases of first offenses or when there are extenuating circum- stances). Finally, if the police behave badly, they bear the full brunt of responsibility. These principles were tested after the murder of Paul McLaughlin, a white state prosecutor,. in May 1995. Mr. McLaughlin had vigorously pros- ecuted gang members, and a young African -American man was seen fleeing the murder scene. But the Boston police made it clear that they would not repeat the rights violations that had followed the Stu- art murder. And the Ten -Point minis- ters and other community leaders made it clear that they, in turn, would fully support an aggressive but fair investigation. As one minister stated, "This is a time for the city of Boston to come together and make it clear that we will not be held hostage to either perpetrators of violence or by those who would exploit the fear of violence to promote more racial divi- sion." _. Early last year, after a carefully focused investigation, a gang mem- ber, Jeffrey Bly, was arrested and Indicted in Mr. McLaughlin's mur- der. African -American leaders joined in praising the police. By focusing their efforts, the Bos- ton police have found it unnecessary to undertake the huge increase in the size of the force that New York did, yet they have achieved even better results. For a remarkable 29-month period, until January 1998, Boston had not a single teen-age homicide victim. (Since then there have been only four.) There have still been occasional police excesses, to be sure. But there are fewer of them each year, and there has been no incident to com- pare with the Amadou Diallo or Abner Louima cases. The Boston offi- cers responsible for violations have been promptly and severely pun- ished. Given Boston's history of less -than - perfect race relations — and the deep distrust rooted in the school desegre- gallon battles of the 1970's — its recent success is especially telling. Boston's story demonstrates that trust between the police and the Afri- can -American community can be re- stored and enhanced — even in the wake of a crisis. It shows that this cooperation between police and com- munity leaders can advance the shared goal of crime reduction. And most important, it helps prove that there is no inherent conflict between effective police work and respect for the freedom and dignity of citizens.O Maureen Dowd is on vacation. Note to Readers The Op -Ed page welcomes unsolicited manuscripts. Be- cause of the volume of submis- sions, however, we regret that we cannot acknowledge an arti- cle or return it. If manuscripts are accepted for publication, authors will be notified within two weeks. For further infor- mation, call (212) 556-1831. zooA) Y, / 9 I i I NEWS Lehman goes with PCRB on officer identification ,Review board wants more info about officers Ithotigh the Iowa City City Coun- cil had been acting to reduce the already modest powers of the Po- lice Citizens Review Board (PCRB), Mayor Ernie Lehman recently sent a memo to the rest of the council saying that he in- tends to stand by the board on one matter. After a city council work session with the PCRB on Feb. 11, Lehman asked the PCRB to write a letter clarifying why they should be given a police officer's identifying number before they reviewed the police chief's (or city manager's) investigation of a citizen complaint against the officer. (It was agreed at the work session that each officer would have a unique identifying number.) Though Lehman was expected to recommend with- holding this number from the board until af- ter they had reviewed an investigation, he instead suggested in a memo that the coun- cil go along with the board's request. In a memo to city attorney Eleanor Dilkes about the letter Lehman requested, PCRB counsel Douglas Russell wrote, "It is my un- derstanding that Mr. Lehman has his own doubts but also wishes to address strong doubts held by [City Councilor] Mr. O'Donnell about whether the board should have this information before it deliberates on a particular complaint" In defense of the PCRB's request, board chair Leah Cohen wrote that knowing the officer's assigned number prior to consider- ing the chief's investigation of the complaint is necessary for two reasons: "First, it allows the board to track the behavior of particular officers over the entire period of the board's existence. Second, it allows the board to use the information to assist in its review of the chief's (or city manager's) determinations re- garding the credibility of a particular officer, where appropriate and relevant to a pending, complaint. "The chief certainly knows the officer's history; the board must have information about the officer's prior involvement to make a fair assessment of the chief's (or city manager's) review of the. matter," Cohen continued. "Nor," Cohen reassured the council, "is the information requested so the board may draw the impermissible Inference that an of- ficer complained against in a prior instance is more likely to have committed miscon- duct." In response to Cohen's letter to him, Leh- man told the council that he still doesn't think having the officer's number in advance is necessary but that he was willing to respect the wishes of the board. "I have indicated my agreement to allow this information for several reasons," Leh- man wrote. "First, I feel that we as a council have set up this board for a specific purpose. Although I do not understand why prior identification is necessary, I feel we should respect their wishes until such time as their procedures prove to be unfair or arbitrary. "Second, their actions to date relative to protecting an officer's identity have con- vinced me of their honesty and sincerity. "Third, even if their actions prove not to be impartial, they have no authority other than to recommend to the chief and the council. "Fourth, our refusal to allow their request will be viewed by those who are critical of the police department as an effort on the part of the council to prevent [the PCRB] from doing what they were set up to do." In the memo, Lehman emphasized five times that, more often than not, the PCRB ends up,reaffirming the quality of the police department. For example: "To date, these evaluations have proven what many of us al- ready suspected, that we have a competent and professional police department." Because of this, Lehman wrote, "I believe we need to take a more constructive view of this board." Lehman also noted, "Our failure to sup- port the PCRB gives the public, whether right or wrong, a reason to suspect our motives." The opportunity to revise the PCRB's powers has come about because the PCRB, city attorney and city council have been working to develop official standard operat- ing procedures for the board. Until now, the PCRB has been operating under standard procedures that it developed independently of the city council. According to PCRB minutes of Feb. 16, a discussion between Russell and Dilkes de- termined that the city attorney would, in addition to various changes agreed upon by council at the Feb. 11 work session,"sup- port the board's right to receive the name of an officer complained of and to use it in a sustained complaint in the board's public report if there were guidelines about how it should be used." ♦ - I... is Mir KrNS Cedar- Rapidv Gazette, Johnson County Today, Sunday, 3/7/99, Page 1 City's police review costs high, but OK OWA CITY — The Police Cit- izens Review Board, only 11/z years old, is costing the city more than twice its original $31,000 budget. City officials, for the most part, say they are not concerned the city is spending at a rate of $80,100 annually to conduct the board's task of reviewing complaints residents have about police conduct. "There are some folks on the council who are less excited about the importance of the PCRB and would cite the amount of expenses as a being a negative," Mayor Ernie Lehman says, using the acronym by which the board is known best. "On the other hand, I think that most of us probably realize that the first year is going to be, by far, the most expensive." The added expenses are going into staff time, according to a memo City Manager Steve Atkins gave the council last week. The city is paying about $26,000 on salaries for the time police spend investigating complaints citizens file against individual officers, Atkins says. It also is paying a city attorney and city clerk about $9,300 each to do review board work. A police stenographer for the effort is to cost about $4,500. The costs are in addition to the $31,000 in original spending plans for staff work, legal advice and supplies. "That's what the council wants, we'll get the work done," Atkins says. The Iowa City Council created the Police Citizens Review Board in fall 1997 after public outcry over the 1996 death of local, artist and businessman Eric Shaw. An police officer fatally shot Shaw in Shaw's South Gilbert Street art shop late on the night of Aug. 30, 1996, while investigating an open door at the shop. The officer ., resigned under pressure and the city reached an out -of -court Mike O'Donnell financial Council member settlement supports PCRB with Shaw's family. But many residents said the city needed a public check on police actions. Five residents comprising the Police Citizens Review Board meet most every week to review complaints people file against officers. Almost every case has ended with the board siding with the officer. "I think these folks do a great job," Councilman Mike O'Donnell says of the review board. "They're doing exactly what we asked them to do. And we all, I think, anticipated these costs were going to be pretty high the first year." O'Donnell says he is more concerned about a hot topic currently before the council — whether police officers' identities should be confidential while the board reviews complaints against the officers. O'Donnell favors confidentiality, although the law establishing the board allows it to keep track of officers using a numbering system. "We knew that the staff time would be involved," O'Donnell says of the time city employees spend on complaints. "And I guess we were responding to the community. They wanted this mechanism to voice concerns." Lehman says the expense appears to be necessary, given the public interest in how Iowa City officers do their jobs. "In this particular case, with the sensitivities that we have in this community relative to the Police Department, and the obvious sensitivities that we have relative to the PCRB, I don't get too excited about the $80,000," Lehman says. "I think that we need to support our Police Department as strongly as we can. And the PCRB's conclusions, so far, have pretty much held that the Police Department is a pretty darn good one."