Councilors to cast final vote for police board

The Laramie City Council will likely take its third and final vote on a proposed “citizen review board” during its meeting tomorrow. The board is focused on community relations, not oversight.

The Laramie City Council will likely decide the fate of a proposed citizen review board when it meets Wednesday.

The proposed board would serve in a strictly advisory capacity, meeting publicly to communicate citizen concerns and feedback directly to Laramie Police Chief Brian Browne.

As both councilors and members of the public have stressed, the board is notable for what it is not.

And most notably, the newly proposed body would not be a civilian oversight board. The possibility of an oversight board was nixed in early 2022 during an exceptionally close vote. Last minute private conversations between councilors flipped the final tally from 5-4 to 4-5; the opposition peeled off one more vote using arguments they did not share publicly.

The altered vote stopped a years-long push for an oversight board dead in its tracks.

Mayor Brian Harrington reminded the council during its last meeting that the proposal before them now is not an oversight board.

“This is not that,” Harrington said. “We had this conversation at length about an oversight board. Maybe that was the wrong thing. I mean, council clearly thought that was the wrong thing. I voted in favor of it and I lost that vote.”

Nor would the new board be a full-fledged use-of-force review board. The board is tasked, in its proposed bylaws, with reviewing uses of force, but city officials have been clear that they will not share some materials that could be key to evaluating use-of-force incidents.

Instead, the board would be tasked with promoting “the highest principles of professional police conduct including, but not limited to, training, hiring practices, policy, consistency in policing, community relations and outreach, use of force, and the review of citizen complaints” by offering recommendations to the chief of police, city manager or the full city council.

The recommendations are just recommendations; they have no binding power and the chief of police is free to ignore them. The board will not be able to hire or fire officers, change policy or mandate procedures.

Rather, the intention is that Laramie residents will have an avenue for commenting on the various aspects of policing listed above, and the police chief will have an avenue for spelling out his rationale and decision-making to the public.

“This has come from a much more Laramie-centric process,” Harrington said. “This is an outgrowth from a lot of the things that we’re hearing from the public (and will) increase how robust our city is.”

Chief, city manager no longer on board

An earlier version of the proposal would have seen the police chief and the city manager serving as two of the board’s seven voting members. Commenters took issue with this — especially with the idea that the chief would serve on a board meant to advise him.

So during the ordinance’s second reading last month, councilors unanimously passed a resolution removing both the chief and the city manager from the proposed board.

“I don’t believe there are any boards where city staff actually sit and participate on the board,” Assistant City Manager Todd Feezer said. “They may be the executor or the ex-officio but they’re not voting members.”

Half a decade of debate

Police oversight and accountability have been debated in Laramie for years. The conversation gained steam in the wake of the 2018 police killing of Robbie Ramirez and again during the 2020 George Floyd protests.

In the summer of 2020, the Laramie City Council agreed to take up the issue of civilian oversight. It first tasked then-Chief Dale Stalder and his boss, City Manager Janine Jordan, with researching the feasibility of civilian oversight boards. Stalder and Jordan reported their findings to the council six months later.

A succession of committees followed.

The council first convened a selection committee, which selected individuals to serve on a police-community relations working group. The working group — which was about one-third law enforcement professionals — developed recommendations for the council.

The council then considered those recommendations, rejecting some and approving others. Among the rejected recommendations was a proposal for a civilian oversight board. But among the approved recommendations was the formation of a police-community relations board — which is what’s being considered now with the “citizen review board.”

“Oversight” vs. “Relations”

The difference between an “oversight” board and a “relations” board reflects the differing opinions locals have about modern policing.

Some — such as the founders of Albany County for Proper Policing and the George Floyd demonstrators — believe there are tangible, systemic problems with local police institutions or the concept of policing in general. And they believe more scrutiny and oversight is warranted.

Others — such as the police themselves and their vocal supporters — believe the disconnect between civilians and police reflects a lack of communication, or a lack of understanding about why the police operate the way they do.

To summarize it flippantly in a way that’s sure to upset everyone: the meta debate Laramie is having is whether law enforcement needs to clean up its act or whether it needs to clean up its image.

The recommendations presented to the city council include proposals for doing both. The oversight board was aimed at doing the former; the relations board was aimed at doing the latter (while also providing another avenue for civilians to share their own opinions with the police).

In that light, the battlelines have shifted.

It’s no longer a debate between those who want oversight and those who want better public relations. Both of those camps support the proposed relations board. Those who believe the police need to better communicate their actions obviously support it, while those who would prefer an oversight board generally think this board could do some good as well.

The police chief himself said he supports the creation of this board.

“I look forward to this advisory board because it gives me the opportunity to share what we're doing with the community,” Chief Browne said. “We have an exceptional police force. And to be honest with you, I'm not afraid to share anything that we're doing because I think that our officers are exceptional men and women who serve the community in an upright fashion day to day, and I look forward to sharing that with the members of the community.”

The only opposition now is from those who don’t want any board, of any kind, reviewing the Laramie Police Department. That includes public commenters who view the board as an insult to the police, as well as councilors who see the board as unnecessary government bloat.

Councilors weigh in

Councilor Joe Shumway is one of the only councilors vocally opposed to the board. He said the council itself is the only oversight or review LPD needs. If there are concerns about the local police department, Shumway said residents can bring those concerns to their councilor.

“Come to public comments, bring your ideas, bring your complaints, bring them to the city council and then hold us responsible to do what we've been elected to do,” he said.

The council is somewhat removed from the day-to-day workings of the LPD, however. It exercises only indirect control over the police and is often very hesitant to exercise any control.

The council is made up of nine elected members. Together, they hire the city manager. The city manager, in turn, hires the chief of police. And the chief of police, in turn, oversees the hiring and firing of officers and other personnel.

The council cannot take a vote to directly fire an individual officer, nor even the chief. It could fire the city manager or use the threat of that termination to take actions against or over the police, but councilors have been explicit in their unwillingness to do this. As Mayor Brian Harrington explained during a recent meeting, the city manager oversees every other department in the city — and terminating her would have ripple effects far beyond the police department.

But Shumway added the proposed review board represents an inappropriate focus on a singular city department.

“Right now we have an oversight target of one department in the city,” he said. “We could have dozens of oversight groups that would focus on fixing or advising or consulting or whatever you want to do, but the focus right now is on one of our departments.”

Others have pointed out during similar debates in Laramie that the police are unique among government employees. Their ability to arrest, injure and in rare cases kill civilians justifies a higher level of scrutiny than, for example, the parks department.

But Councilor Erin O’Doherty said this review board would not constitute enhanced scrutiny. She said it would be on par with something like the Parks, Tree and Recreation Advisory Board.

“I don't think it's targeting,” she said. “It’s just a way to increase the conversation with the public. Most of us here, we (councilors) don’t have run-ins with the police … We're not the most representative in terms of run-ins with the police, so I feel like it's better to have our ears open, and have a conversation, and this gives us that opportunity.”

The board passed first reading with an 8-1 vote. It passed second reading with a 7-2 vote. Given these past votes, comments from councilors during both readings and the current make-up of councilors — many of whom ran for election or reelection knowing this topic was on the table — the council is likely to pass the proposal Wednesday when it meets.

But the board that passes might no longer be a citizen “review” board. There are proposals on the table to rename the body, perhaps to “citizen outreach board” or “citizen relations board” — two names councilors said were more accurate than “review.”