Civilians on Police Use-of-Force Review Boards: A Delphi Study Involving Six Police Departments
Abstract
Some U.S. law enforcement agencies incorporate voting community members on their use-of-force review boards to support transparency, legitimacy, and community relations. This thesis set out to determine whether police departments that incorporate community members on their review boards follow similar standards in structure and operations. Six cities were included in this study: Denver, Las Vegas, Olympia, Phoenix, Portland, and Tucson. A comparative case study method was used to evaluate their use-of-force review board practices. A two-round Delphi, which asked nine board members from the six cities to identify ideal structures and operations for these boards, found a wide variety of practices. All Delphi participants expressed support for the practice of including voting community members. The literature review and Delphi results identify several recommendations for improving these boards. Recommendations include increasing training, term limits, the authority to review, and opportunities to question for voting community members as well as improving public reporting.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1065267
Entities
People
- John H. Breckenridge
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School