Policing Advisory Commission Gets Support from Acting Chief
Acting Chief Marcus Jones said Tuesday evening he supported the creation of a policing advisory commission, in which public members would have a role in considering policies that affect Montgomery County police.
County police have been under scrutiny for the more than a year. On June 11, 2018, a police officer shot and killed an unarmed African-American man, who was walking through his neighborhood. A white officer used the N word while four African-American men were being questioned for trespassing.
And on Tuesday, an undercover Montgomery County police officer was charged with second-degree assault and misconduct in office in connection with the use of force during a July 3 arrest.
The commission will have 13 members, including one from each of the nine council members. The county executive would nominate four others to appear on the council.
Non-voting members of the commission would be the police chief and a union leader.
Each member would serve three years.
A public hearing on the board legislation was Tuesday. Councilmember Hans Riemer, lead sponsor of the legislation, said the council’s Public Safety Committee will take up the legislation in September. A vote from the full council would follow.
This is the first step to disbanding the Police Department in Montgomery County.
How on Gods green earth does the does the county councils plan to keep officers,when every move they make will be scutenized by unqualified citizens?
This is so bad an idea from many ways.
Officers will not do their job for fear of reprisals from the citizen review board.
Shame on the county council and shame on the acting Chief for throwing his officers under the bus.
Residents of the county are getting wants they voted for,which is absolutely nothing that helps maintain peace and tranquility in the county
I disagree that the MCPD will be afraid to do their job with an oversight commission. Rather, the advisory commission will be just another toothless board that is unable to rein in cowboy cops. I would rather MOCO establish a police commissioner structure such as New York city’s where the Commissioner is the senior officer on the force and directly responsible to the County Executive. There will still be various department chiefs, but not an independent Police Chief.
Olive officers that are afraid to do their jobs due to civilian oversight should be fired for incompetence and cowardice. Doing a police job should not involve kneedropping on the neck of a cuffed suspect followed by months of hypocritical introspection into civil rights and police brutality that leads to no action and multimillion dollar settlements while the officer involved pilots a desk or s suspended with pay.
Yes, black lives matter, #metoo, and all the other issues of modern society…but police brutality must end.
The notion that oversight and accountability are a threat to police is absolutely ridiculous. Even though it irritates officers when they are told that taxpayers fund their salary, the fact remains that we have a right not to be terrorized by the officers whose salaries we provide. When officers engage in misconduct and violate the rights of citizens, it is the taxpayer that ultimately gets hit with the bill for settlement payouts as well as any insurance rate increases resulting from their misconduct. When Montgomery County has some of the highest tax rates in the nation, it is not too much to expect our officers to prioritize treating everyone with respect. It is asinine to expect me to fund the salary of a police force that views oversight and accountability as a threat, regardless of how dangerous their job may be. Nobody is saying that police should not to their job. What we are saying is that there should be accountability when officers feel that their job entails having a willful disregard for citizens rights even in instances when that citizen is already handcuffed and in custody.