Syracuse lawmakers instructed Syracuse’s Citizen Review Board to resume investigations into police misconduct complaints.  Councilor Donna Moore on Monday read a letter delivering that instruction at the council’s voting session. Moore, who chairs the council’s Public Safety committee, sa id that most councilors had signed onto the letter, and that those who had not intended to do so soon. Moore stated that the undersigned councilors were directing the Citizens Review Board to resume its investigations consistent with the authority granted to it under the Syracuse City Code. That direction contradicts Mayor Sharon Owens’ instructions to the board, which in March paused its investigations into police misconduct. “We believe the Citizens Review Board should continue to fulfill the duties assigned to it by local law unless and until a court determines otherwise,” Moore said. “We recognize that this decision may be subject to legal challenge, and affirm our support for the board as it carries out the responsibilities entrusted to it by local law.” Resuming investigations could invite a lawsuit from the Police Benevolent Association, the union representing Syracuse police officers. Union President Joe Moran did not respond to a Central Current reporter’s phone calls and text messages requesting an interview or comment on the councilors’ letter.  The city has intimated to the review board that if it resumes investigations and is sued, corporation counsel will not represent the CRB’s members in court. But Moore told a Central Current reporter after Monday’s voting session that the CRB has the means to assemble a legal defense independent of the city. Members of the review board in 2017 hired outside counsel to represent them in a successful lawsuit, also heard by judges in the Fourth Appellate Division in Rochester, against the Syracuse Police Department for failing to comply with the ordinance that created the board. “So the CRB has money in their budget that they can hire a lawyer, and I think our statement was to say, if they, you know, we’re here to support you,” Moore said. “So if that happens, we’re not just going to drop you on your head. We’re going to make sure that you have what you need to be able to have legal representation.” Whether the CRB will follow the council’s direction remains unclear. Central Current attempted to contact Citizen Review Board Chair Don Johnson, but a spokesperson said Johnson had no comment until after the CRB’s Tuesday meeting. The council’s joint letter came after six lawmakers on Wednesday listened to opinions from three lawyers arguing against the city’s lead attorney, Sue Katzoff, and its own counsel, lawyer Tom Cerio. Katzoff and Cerio have argued a recent ruling in the Rochester Fourth Appellate Division sets precedent for Syracuse’s CRB to stop its investigations.  Judges in that court issued a ruling in a case between the Rochester Civilian Accountability Board and the union representing the Rochester Police Department that determined the independent review board was unlawful because the city had improperly granted the board disciplinary powers. Those powers needed to be granted through bargaining.  After the Syracuse Police Benevolent Association requested the city’s lawyers to review whether the Rochester ruling’s precedent affected Syracuse’s independent review board, the city’s lawyers have advised that the ruling applies to the Citizen Review Board, too. But at Wednesday’s committee meeting, three lawyers joined citizen activists and former CRB members in disagreeing with the city’s lawyers and Mayor Sharon Owens’ decision to defang the CRB. Local civil rights attorney Alan Rosenthal, New York Civil Liberties Union Assistant Director of Policy Michael Sisitzky and NAACP Syracuse redress committee chair Mazaher Kaila argued that the Rochester ruling has no bearing on Syracuse. Kaila and Katzoff both also practice law at Bousquet Holstein, a local law firm.  Rosenthal, critical to the creation of the first iteration of Syracuse’s civilian police oversight body more than three decades ago, argued after the meeting that the city appears more interested in placating the police department than in serving the constituency that the review board represents. “I think that it’s just a political question of picking sides, and invariably they’ve sided with the police,” Rosenthal said. What police accountability advocates, lawyers have said Rosenthal told the councilors in attendance that when first crafting the Citizen Review Board decades ago, he had fought hard to grant the CRB disciplinary power similar to that wielded by the review board in Rochester, but said he is glad he wasn’t successful. In Rochester, the mayor and police chief ceded the power to determine discipline for police officers to the civilian accountability board, meaning the two executives of law enforcement in the city had no say in disciplining officers.  Though other cities in New York have civilian oversight bodies similar to Syracuse’s Citizen Review Board, Rochester’s Police Accountability Board was the only such entity in the state that boasted disciplinary powers. The Rochester police chief could only intervene with the board’s discipline, Rosenthal said, if the intervention made the disciplinary sentence more severe. The creation of Rochester’s board also stripped the mayor of the power of engaging with collective bargaining regarding officer discipline, which Rosenthal said conflicts with civil service law. The Syracuse Citizen Review Board has never claimed any such powers, a point which Rosenthal and his fellow attorneys reiterated.  Nothing in the ordinance creating the CRB requires the Syracuse police chief to follow the CRB’s recommendations, said Rosenthal, who added that the recommendation of the CRB has rarely been followed. The Syracuse ordinance states that the police chief retains disciplinary powers over the police department’s personnel. Rosenthal questioned, then, why the city had chosen to interpret the Rochester ruling as applicable to Syracuse’s review board — and whether the corporation counsel and mayor could in good faith represent the interests of both the police department and citizen review board. “How in the world can corporation counsel purport to represent the review board?” Rosenthal said. “… It probably would make sense to set it up so that, in the first instance, the CRB has their own counsel and doesn’t have to jump through the hoops. To break away from corporation counsel and hire somebody.” Since the city put the CRB’s investigations on ice, legal experts from the NYCLU have been outspoken in their criticism of that decision and their advocacy for the council and CRB to defy the mayor’s instructions. Sisitzky, the NYCLU policy expert, on Wednesday argued that there is a strong likelihood that the court will take up the City of Rochester’s request for an appeal in the previous ruling. If the court does hear an appeal, Sisitzky said, the appeal itself could reverse the previous ruling, or present clarity on the ruling’s precedent that may render the local debate moot. “You don’t have to be complicit in their attempts to weaken the CRB further, especially with the pending effort to challenge the lower court’s ruling,” Sisitzky said. “… It’s really critical that the council hold firm on this because clearly the administration is uninterested in putting up a vigorous defense of police oversight.” Kaila, the redress committee chair for the local NAACP, echoed Rosenthal and Sisitzky in calling on Syracuse officials to defend the CRB. The NAACP believes the city government must either “vigorously defend” the CRB if it faces litigation for proceeding with operations, Kaila said, or allow and support the board to hire outside counsel.  In a statement provided to Central Current, Owens wrote that it was the council’s responsibility, not the mayor’s, to determine how the CRB should proceed in the wake of the Rochester ruling. Corporation counsel had rendered its legal opinion in order to support the lawmakers with information as they considered the CRB’s future, Owens said. “In accordance with the Charter, and rightfully so, I do not have authority over the CRB and the next steps of the board,” Owens wrote. After the Owens administration paused the CRB’s investigations, Councilor Donna Moore has been the only lawmaker to publicly call on the mayor to reverse course.  Now, Moore’s peers have joined her crusade, though Moore said Monday that her colleagues were always supportive of the CRB and had exercised caution because of the legal advice they had received from the city’s lawyers. “It feels really good that I was able to bring speakers in that helped change their mind on that and realize that if we do have an objection and they take us to court, then we have the wherewithal to fight it,” Moore said. Editor’s note: Central Current Board Chair Larry Bousquet, a founding member of the organization, is a founding partner with Bousquet Holstein PLLC. The firm is also a sponsor of Central Current. The post Syracuse lawmakers direct Citizen Review Board to resume investigations of police, going against mayor, city lawyers appeared first on Central Current. ...read more read less