Citizens oversight panel intended to ask for subpoena
By Tim Eberly
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
January 05, 2009
The new Atlanta police oversight board set up to investigate complaints against the city’s law 
enforcement officers won a small victory Monday morning. The Atlanta Police Department turned over documents to the city’s Citizen Review Board shortly before board was to ask a City Council committee for a subpoena to force the department to relinquish them. For more than a month, police officials had been refusing to release the reports, which are related to a February incident that the Review Board is investigating.
enforcement officers won a small victory Monday morning. The Atlanta Police Department turned over documents to the city’s Citizen Review Board shortly before board was to ask a City Council committee for a subpoena to force the department to relinquish them. For more than a month, police officials had been refusing to release the reports, which are related to a February incident that the Review Board is investigating. In the incident, a Smyrna woman alleges that an Atlanta police officer detained her for an hour and a half while he wrote her two tickets for waiting curbside in her car for family members at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
It is one of the first complaints that the Review Board has decided to investigate since it began reviewing complaints on November 13, 2008. The Police Department’s refusal to release police officers’ statements about the incident marked the first sign of resistance and a potential power struggle between the police and the Review Board, which was created after an Atlanta police shooting of a 92 year old woman iin 2006. And the Review Board’s plan to ask for a subpoena from the City Council committee on Monday was its first move toward playing hardball.
The Police Department turned the statements over shortly after 10 a.m., less than an hour before the committee’s 11 a.m. meeting. “I’m glad we got the documents,” Review Board executive director Cris Beamud said. “I think it’s a step in the right direction.” Beamud said she believed the Police Department’s action is an acknowledgment that the Review Board is entitled to such documents. The city law enacted to create the review board gives the board “full access” to police reports and documents.
“The law is very clear,” Beamud said. “It requires them to turn over these reports.” Atlanta police Maj. Lane Hagin is in charge of the department’s internal affairs unit that was withholding the reports. He stopped short of acknowledging that city law requires the Police Department to release the documents, but said the department decided to do so last week.
“It’s the right thing to do for now,” Hagin said. “We made the decision to turn those documents over and wait to see what council does with the new ordinance." Police officials asked the city last month to allow them to only turn over documents and information that are public records, usually a small portion of a case file when the investigation is under way. The amendment not yet been voted on by the City Council. If the change is approved, it would allow the Police Department to withhold most information from the Review Board until after the department conducts its own internal investigations. (uhhh....can you say "WHITEWASH?")
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