Iowa should leave police review boards intact and respect local control

The police’s relationship with the people they protect and serve is unique. Many people are already having one of the worst days of their lives by the time armed police with authority to search and detain them get involved. Some residents and some city leaders reasonably think those dynamics justify policies providing for extraordinary transparency and independent assessment of police actions.

It’s a difficult balance to strike. Unfortunately, Republicans and Democrats in the Iowa Legislature are advancing legislation that would discard nuance with an outright ban on citizen review boards and make questionable changes to other provisions for how local governments review public safety employees’ conduct. Besides that, the Legislature already meddles far too much in how cities conduct their business. Senate File 2325 in its current form won’t make Iowa better; lawmakers should amend or discard it.

More: Iowa bill would ban citizen review boards for police, change rules for officer discipline

What are citizen review boards?

Even the very best police work will still generate grumbling about officers’ actions. Police carry and sometimes use deadly weapons. Unlike most government officials, they can conduct searches and place people under arrest. They have considerable leeway in how they use that power.

Those facts are some of reasons that have prompted cities in Iowa and elsewhere to set up police review boards, populated by members of the public. The missions of such boards vary – some make only recommendations; others can make binding policy; some can review confidential information; and others cannot – but their common thread is directing more sunlight toward the responsibility entrusted to police and seeking to increase public confidence through their reviews of officers’ actions.

Under Iowa law, most cities with at least 8,000 people must have a civil service commission, with members of the public appointed by the mayor, that referees employment disputes involving police officers and firefighters. Some critics of existing or proposed police review boards argue that the civil service commissions are a sufficient means of civilian review and that having a second body examining the police is at best confusing and redundant and is at worst unfair to public safety workers.

Bill to abolish police review boards shuns greater transparency

That criticism is too dismissive of a critical distinction between a police review board and a civil service commission. A primary purpose of the commission is ensuring that officers and firefighters get a fair shake from their bosses in the city. One benefit of a review board is showing the public that people who complain about law enforcement will get a fair shake, and not an opaque dismissal from colleagues of the police officer or officers in question.

The legislation that passed the Iowa Senate with bipartisan approval this month and an Iowa House committee last week isn’t interested in that. It implies that residents of a city shouldn't be able to have influence over the officers who are sworn to protect and serve them, short of voting for city council members.

“There should be a way for us to ensure that the citizens have a voice in what goes on in their communities,” said state Rep. Jerome Amos Jr., a Waterloo Democrat. The state has already enhanced protections for police in recent years. In 2021, the Legislature approved a state version of the qualified immunity doctrine, which stifles civil litigation against officers unless litigants can show police knew they were violating an established right.

“These are boards that the communities involved decided that they wanted,” said state Sen. Janice Weiner, an Iowa City Democrat. Iowa City has had a police review board since the late 1990s. “The one in my community has really created much more positive relations,” she said.

Politics obscures the debate over police review boards

Senate File 2325 would shut down review boards in Cedar Rapids, Coralville, Dubuque, Iowa City and University Heights and ban any new ones. The rest of the bill isn’t great, either. Backers say it would provide standardized procedure for civil service commissions. Most of the bill’s language deals with requiring police and fire chiefs to meet higher burdens to discipline officers and firefighters. Sen. Scott Webster, a Bettendorf Republican, gave little credence to opposing views on the Senate floor.

“We're going to vote to defend our law enforcement from political interventions by citizen review boards and the media frenzy that goes along with them,” he said. “We've all seen how the media frenzy can ignore the truth, ignore the facts, and instead stoke public opinion, leading to unwarranted prosecutions of front-line defenders more akin to witch hunts than real justice.”

It’s an argument intended to shut down debate, not further it. It can suffice to point out that no civil service commission or citizen review board in Iowa or anywhere else has authority to file criminal charges, and that public opinion cannot force a prosecutor to take any action.

Attacks on local control have long since grown tiresome

For over half a century, the Iowa Constitution has declared that cities “are granted home rule power and authority, not inconsistent with the laws of the general assembly, to determine their local affairs and government” except for passing new forms of taxes. However, the Legislature has taken to diminishing the spirit of this amendment by passing laws to make numerous city policies inconsistent with its law.

This bill would be just another blow, as would the bill to cancel central Iowa’s basic-income pilot project. As would the bill to ban traffic cameras. All could join earlier laws clamping down on cities' and counties' landlord regulation, fireworks regulation, gun regulation, hog-confinement regulation and more.

Different sizes of cities have different needs and should be able to address them instead of being handcuffed by the Legislature at every turn.

All this gives legislators numerous independent grounds to insist on changes to Senate File 2325. They should leave cities’ citizen review boards intact and be conscientious about revising civil-service provisions instead of falling in line behind a “back the blue” mantra.

Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register's editorial board: Carol Hunter, executive editor; Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; Rachelle Chase, opinion columnist; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

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This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa should leave police review boards intact, respect local control