Menino manages to fan flames of mistrust
The Globe reported last week that Mayor Thomas Menino is sitting on an eight-month-old report by Northeastern criminologist Jack McDevitt. The report, commissioned by former police chief Kathleen O'Toole, called for sweeping changes to restore credibility and trust to a department battered by nationally publicized fatal mistakes, corruption, and icy relations with many residents.
The report called for an ombudsman, a civilian review board, and new channels for citizens to file complaints against the police, such as social service agencies. For too long, complaints disappear into the secret abyss of the Internal Affairs Division.
A police spokeswoman told the Globe that Internal Affairs sustained a third of civilian complaints last year. ''We feel that we have been successful in policing our own,'' she said. Robert Kenney, president of the Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society, added, ''The bottom line is there is no outcry in the public for any type of civilian review. The system works today.'' When the public has no way of knowing why the remaining twothirds of complaints were dismissed, this could clearly be a case of small success and massive failure. The reason there is no outcry may be because Menino and his predecessor, Ray Flynn, have spent the last two decades destroying any hope of a serious, independent review body.
In 1990, Attorney General James Shannon published a report based on a year-long investigation. It detailed a pattern of youth of color being illegally stopped and searched and being forced to give false testimony in the infamous case of Carol Stuart, during which African-American neighborhoods were turned upside down when all along her white husband was the killer.
Shannon said the police ''just didn't give us much cooperation.'' As a result, Shannon called for a civilian review board.
Flynn, who often offered lame alternatives to a review board, said, ''I don't think there's anywhere near the kind of erosion of public confidence that some people suggest.'' Outside experts disagreed. At that time, Sam Walker, a University of Nebraska criminal justice professor who studied 50 cities, called Boston one of the nation's top ''nonperformers'' in police oversight. ''Places like Boston are now out of step,'' Walker said.
By 1992, both US Attorney Wayne Budd and the St. Clair Commission called for a civilian review board after their investigations into alleged police misconduct. The St. Clair Commission cited a ''disturbing'' and ''profound lack of confidence and trust'' in the ability of the police to handle citizen complaints. It said, ''Only by bringing community members into the process can the Internal Affairs Division hope to regain credibility and restore the public's confidence that the Boston Police can be trusted to investigate themselves.'' The road to future denial was well-paved. In 1991, the Globe detailed campaign contributions by the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association to city councilors who opposed civilian review boards.
Then-councilor Menino, who received $1,000 from the union, said, ''If you think I'm going to sell my vote for money, you have to be crazy. I'm insulted by that.'' His actions since then have been an insult to common sense.
On this issue, he became the ''urban mechanic'' who refused to look under the hood of the police department. In 1994, despite a botched drug raid that literally scared 75-year-old Accelyne Williams to death, Menino denounced civilian review boards as a ''crutch.'' He declared, ''Show me a city where a civilian review board works.'' In the aftermath of the police pepper-pellet killing of Victoria Snelgrove during a Red Sox celebration in 2004, Menino continued to claim that he feared a civilian review board ''could take charge of the police department. I'm not looking for that. I'm looking for us to have that connection with the community, so the community has faith in us. We shouldn't have an aggressive approach where we have a board out there saying, 'Oh, the police are doing a bad job.'.'' Few advocates of review boards ever trash entire police departments, given the thankless, courageous work the cops do, putting their lives on the line every day they put on the uniforms. The question has always been whether departments can be the final advocate for people complaining about bad apples. The conclusion McDevitt apparently reached is no.
Over the phone yesterday, McDevitt said community trust in the police is critical if mayors like Menino, who attack ''Stop Snitching'' T-shirts, want the fullest community courage and cooperation against street violence. ''It's so important for the police department to take the lead to see that the process is transparent,'' McDevitt said. ''With trust in the police among young people much lower, it is even more important that procedures be put in place for the whole system to work.'' Every day Menino sits on reform, he guarantees the system will not work.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail is jackson@globe.com.
