Syracuse, NY — A Syracuse board tasked with providing independent reviews of complaints against city police will hold a public march next week to advocate for more authority, including the ability to get unfettered access to cops’ body camera footage.
The Syracuse Citizen Review Board has organized the March for Accountability and Transparency on Tuesday and is inviting residents to join them. The board, which has 11 seats filled by city residents, is urging the Syracuse Common Council and Mayor Ben Walsh’s administration to update the local law that governs what the watchdog agency does.
That law has not been revised since 2011, a time when police body cameras were not on anyone’s radar. The CRB currently receives body camera footage from the police department for the cases it reviews, but the process to get it can take extra time and relies on the department to determine what’s relevant.
“We’ve advocated for unfettered access to body worn camera, being able to go … ourselves and retrieve the proper footage that we believe is associated with these complaints,” said Ranette Releford, the CRB’s administrator.
Syracuse Police Chief Joe Cecile said it makes sense to take a look at a 13-year-old law to see if updates to reflect modern police practices are warranted. However, he believes providing direct access to all of the department’s body camera footage would create security and privacy concerns. He said most officers don’t even have access to those files for those reasons.
Cecile also said that the department’s practice is to give the CRB all of the footage associated with the incidents that prompted complaints under review.
Syracuse Common Councilor Chol Majok, who chairs the council’s public safety committee, said he and Council President Helen Hudson have been discussing the need to look at the CRB law for possible amendments, including addressing body camera footage.
While not taking a stance on how direct the CRB access should be, Majok said it’s important to at least preserve the current arrangement well into the future so if there’s ever a chief or mayor who is hostile to the watchdog board, that person can’t freeze them out.
“Certain things need to be codified,” Major said. “You just don’t know who will be the next person.”
Another issue that a revision to the law could address is how much information the police chief provides the CRB about how their recommendations were handled. The law requires that CRB sends its findings and relevant discipline recommendations to the chief, and the law directs the chief to notify the CRB of the action taken and reasons if no discipline was imposed.
Those letters have not been coming to the CRB, though. According to its most recently published annual report, which covered 2022, the CRB received no chief letters in response to five cases in which the board provided a recommendation.
“We continue to provide those findings letters and continue to look for the response that is supposed to be received, as it relates to the legislation,” Releford said this week.
Cecile said he’s held off on sending letters because there’s some disagreement between the CRB and the city’s legal department about the level of detail that should be included.
Regardless of how those issues can get resolved, Majok said the council will take a hard look at the law to make sure it’s updated and effective.
“There’s a need for a CRB,” he said. “We want the CRB to fully function and be able to do what it was created to do.”
Tuesday’s march begins at noon at the Dunbar Center, 1453 S. State St., and ends about 1.5 miles away at the front steps of City Hall. It kicks off a series of events the CRB has planned as part of a promotion called CRB Week, which the board started last year in conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the original legislation creating the agency.
An open house at the CRB’s new offices on the fifth floor of 300 S. State St. is scheduled from 10 am to 5 pm on Wednesday. Anthony Heard Sr., the board’s community engagement specialist, encourages the public to visit so they can see how the office setup protects citizens’ privacy and so they can learn about the services the board provides.
When the CRB joined several city departments in moving from the former Citizen Hall Commons building last year, it was initially included in an open floor plan area with other city staff on the seventh floor. The board convinced the administration and the common council to find alternative space in the leased building.
“We had to fight for confidentiality because of the cases that we work with and the complainants that we work with,” Heard said. “Also, in our previous spot, we were directly across from police department’s internal affairs. … If someone is coming in to complain about the police, you kind of don’t want to run into the police.”
CRB will focus on a social media outreach effort on Thursday, April 4, and then go out into the community to meet with various groups on Friday, April 5. The board’s monthly public meeting also takes place that week, at 5:30 pm Thursday , April 4, at City Hall.
City reporter Jeremy Boyer can be reached at [email protected](315) 657-5673, Twitter or Facebook.
