Still-nascent police oversight commission pushes for transparent review of all complaints

Since the passage of the voter-approved Austin Police Oversight Act two years ago, the mission of the Community Police Review Commission has been continually thwarted and delayed. It wasn’t until in August 2024 a judge ruled that APD must make public its secret “G file” of police misconduct that the Oversight Act outlawed and the CPRC was formed. The body finally met for the first time in May.

At the CPRC’s second meeting on June 20, commissioners learned the process by which they’ll actually do the work of reviewing cases of police misconduct and making policy recommendations to APD Chief Lisa Davis. 

It all begins with APD’s Internal Affairs division: Lieutenant Eric Wilson told the CPRC that once Interal Affairs has interviewed all witnesses involved and conducted its investigation, it will notify the Office of Police Oversight, which will conduct its own investigation. Then, OPO will brief CPRC on the incident the day of their monthly public meeting, sharing a folder containing an unredacted summary report, body worn camera footage, photographs and anything else related to the incident. Any community member can also notify CPRC of a complaint through its website. CPRC will then ask OPO to figure out if it meets criteria within 30 days. Then CPRC can begin to review it themselves.

The urgency of beginning the work and cutting through plodding bureaucratic timelines was again a throughline of many commissioners’ concerns. Mitchell noted that “the laws are in flux” – indeed, the legislature is attempting to pass a law that would require reinstating G files for all law enforcement agencies across the state – but “in addition to any prohibiting law, we also have a police contract that the transparency we now have in Austin continues for the next three years.”

“We will move at a pace… to make sure you get your recommendation to the chief of police before she makes her recommendation,” OPO Complaint Investigator Kevin Masters assured commissioners, saying that by the next meeting, on July 18, OPO will have given them two previously closed adjudicated cases for training, and hopefully another that is open and ready for a CPRC recommendation.

“I hope that demonstrates that we’re ready to roll,” said Masters.

Many commissioners had a problem with APD Internal Affairs being the arbiter of which cases come to the commission.

“I don’t want the fox to be telling the farmer what hours he should look at the coop,” said Commissioner Carlos Greaves. “The expectation of the citizens of Austin is that we get to see every one and we get to pick any one.”

Commissioner Flood articulated the difference between IA and the CPRC’s missions: “they’re worried about the officers. We’re concerned about the citizens.” 

Chair John Banaski agreed: “We don’t want to have it filtered.”

Longtime police oversight advocate Kathy Mitchell of Equity Action, the group that sued the city successfully over its failure to implement the Oversight Act, urged commissioners to keep asking for clarification on their ability to see every case, considering how much pushback the formation of this commission received: “It actually is critically important that you dig into this question, because the purview of this commission is broader than critical incidents. You’re going to be looking at people who believe the charges that were brought against them are false. You’re going to be looking at incidents of official oppression and that take a variety of forms. You’re going to be looking at incidents that may never have gone to IA in the first place.” 

“If the process is grounded in, ‘step one: IA give the file to OPO’ – then we have missed the boat, because we have missed the complaints that have gone to OPO,” said Mitchell. “You’re asking the right questions.” 

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