Citizen Oversight Committee reviews data

By Allie Blood

Published May 2, 2008

In the first of a series of analytical meetings Thursday, the Citizen Oversight Committee reviewed several sets of data regarding arrests by the Columbia Police Department.

After tabling the decision to take a straw poll to determine where the committee stood on their recommendation for a citizen review board, they discussed the implications of a set of data presented by Tracey Greever Rice, Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis Associate director. She said the data was derived at the committee’s request, and was given to her by the CPD. She said because she had raw data, it was unfair to look at causation or probability.

“We can look at cases, we can look at proportion,” Rice said.

She said the information was limited regarding context, residence of complainants, and some demographic information.

“Because of the confounding nature, you’re always going to have vexed data, put together for a totally different purpose,” Rice said.

Committee member David Smith said this information still was valid, as a “slice of the pie” when looking at factors such as narratives, testimonials from groups and other racial profiling data.

The data said black citizens made 55 percent of the complaints and white citizens made 45 percent of complaints. In 30 percent of complaints made by white citizens, the police were found to have acted inappropriately, but in 3.2 percent of complaints by black citizens, the police were found to have acted inappropriately.

“It looks like some disparity,” committee member Jeffrey Milyo said.

The committee discussed whether to have the CPD present at its next meeting to respond to the data.

“I’d like to hear what the police department has to say about this,” committee member Chris Egbert said.

Suspicion arose that the data might be unreliable, committee member Diane Booth said.

“I’m going to use an old computer term: Garbage in, garbage out,” she said.

Rice said the Internal Affairs unit of CPD made many reparations to the system, so CPD might respond by dismissing previous data.

After looking at data presented by chairman Rex Campbell regarding racial profiling, the issue was raised that it is not the job of the committee to decide if there are racist police officers, but rather to decide if a review board is an effective solution to police/citizen relations in Columbia.

“We’re not charging the CPD with racism,” Booth said. “That is not our job.”

The committee decided not to meet with the CPD at their next meeting on May 15, but rather to continue analyzing the data they received. Campbell said the committee should keep in mind that if they want to submit anything for the fiscal year 2009 budget, they should submit it in the summer.

“If we want to implement a review board for next fiscal year, we need to recommend a summary, but not a full report, by July,” Campbell said.