Editorial: CPD needs review board
May 2, 2008
There have been a few fairly serious crimes in Columbia in the past year that, despite occurring in front of dozens of people in very public places, have produced few leads or cooperative witnesses for the Columbia Police Department to follow. This is a frustrating problem, sure, but it’s more of a grave indicator of the disconnected nature of the police department’s relationship with the very citizens it seeks to protect.
Coming off the heels of a summer filled with gun-related violence and few leads — even though the violence was both initial attacks and those in retaliation — we spent the year waiting for the CPD to institute some kind of program, and take any kind of action to encourage trust from the community. Our hopes were in vain, though. There has been talk of a citizen review board for months now, and we think that’s a good start in improving the current situation. But we want to see less talk and more action.
There is clearly a necessity for such a board to be in place. It’s not unreasonable to say there is a problem when, after a bar fight outside a popular nightclub, the 200 or so witnesses all claim to have seen nothing. We understand that a lot of them were probably drunk, or not looking, but come on.
What is unreasonable, though, is to expect citizens to trust police when they’ve not been given any real reason to. CPD has made little effort to reach out to Columbia residents and to solve the real problems that exist in our city.
Their refusal to acknowledge the existence of a gang problem is particularly troubling. There is a problem that needs to be fixed, and the longer the police department sees fit to stick their heads in the sand instead of deal with the issue, the more violence our community will see with little to no resolution. A citizen review board could also help in this regard: They could get to the root of the CPD’s hesitations about openly considering the idea of gangs in Columbia and everyone could move on from there.
We’d love for the police department to solve these issues on their own, and soon at that, but past experiences have shown us that they are quite incapable. So a citizen review board seems like the best, most transparent option to solve some problems that stand in the way of appropriate implementation of law and order in our city. We hope the Citizen Oversight Committee votes to create one as soon as it is realistically possible.
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