Council to vote on top candidates for Police Advisory Board
The chosen candidates reflect a range of backgrounds including health, social services, law and law enforcement. The board will advise the police chief on his department’s policies and procedures.
The Laramie City Council is scheduled to select five community members to staff the city’s new Police Advisory Board during its meeting today.
The five members, the police chief, the city manager and a council liaison will meet publicly at least six times a year, serving as a conduit between civilians and the Laramie Police Department.
A nominating committee narrowed the field of 20 applicants down to the final five, who are:
Susie Scott, a program manager with the Wyoming Department of Health
Linda Devine, a local defense attorney who has been vocal about police reform
Bob Sell, the CEO of Ark Regional Services
Ted Cramer, the executive director of Laramie Soup Kitchen
Mitch Cushman, a former LPD commander who co-chaired the city’s original police-community working group
Once appointed, the advisory board members will take part in police training, accompany police on ride-alongs, and advise Laramie Police Chief Brian Browne on his department’s various policies and procedures.
The board will not have any oversight powers, nor will it have the ability to hire or fire personnel, set policy, or review materials related to individual use-of-force incidents. Instead, the board is intended to provide the chief with community feedback about his department’s policies, and to serve as a link to the wider community through which the chief can explain why the police do what they do.
Meetings will be open to the public and advertised at least one week in advance. Members will serve staggered three-year terms.
The board will interact solely with the Laramie Police Department and does not affect the Albany County Sheriff’s Office or the University of Wyoming Police Department.
The Laramie City Council will have to approve the final five candidates with a vote during its meeting today. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m.
The long road to establishing a police board
The board grew out of long-standing community discussions about the role of police as well as local pushes to make local law enforcement more transparent and accountable.
In 2018, a sheriff’s deputy with a long history of violence shot and killed an unarmed man. The killing kicked off the first of several aggressive pushes for greater police accountability. In 2020, when the world marched for police reform in the wake of another police killing — the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the racist Minneapolis Police Department — demonstrators in Laramie forced the city council to consider police oversight measures.
The council’s subsequent efforts at research and development took years. Eventually a working group was formed to advise the council on its next steps. That group was plagued with difficulties but it came forward with several recommendations — including revamping mental health responses, launching a new complaint system, establishing a civilian oversight board and establishing an advisory board.
The oversight board was narrowly defeated following private communications between councilors later uncovered by the Laramie Reporter. Ultimately, the oversight proposal was rejected because a slim majority of councilors were convinced police would resign if the city established an oversight board.
The advisory board had better luck. It was ultimately supported by the police chief himself and by all nine city councilors, who voted unanimously to give the board a go, despite reservations on the part of some.
Elsewhere, the struggle for greater transparency takes different forms. WyoFile is currently pushing to uncover how much the Albany County Sheriff’s Office paid to settle the wrongful death lawsuit that followed the 2018 killing. And lawmakers are bringing a bill that would give an existing state commission more oversight over badly behaved officers.