Atlanta Police Oversight Board Seeks 'Banned' Info
By Tim Eberly
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
December 12, 2008
Members of Atlanta’s new police oversight board talked Thursday evening about seeking a subpoena to get information the Atlanta Police Department is refusing to turn over. The Citizen Review Board members, in their monthly meeting at City Hall, also discussed other options, such as pursuing legal action against police Chief Richard Pennington to get him to comply with city law. The Police Department has refused to turn over police officers’ statements in connection with an incident the Review Board is investigating. The board has been meeting for 1 1/2 years and has been asking for police documents for several incidents since September 2008.
Police Chief Pennington is desperately trying to amend city law to prevent the Review Board, created after the illegal police shooting of an elderly woman, from getting most police reports and documents until after the department conducts its own investigation. The board was created to investigate complaints against Atlanta law enforcement officers and, in a broader sense, to restore the public’s trust in the Police Department.
The standoff puts the city Law Department in the position of having two of its attorneys representing the Police Department, and two others counseling the Review Board. Roger Bhandari, one of the Review Board’s attorneys, told the board Thursday that it needed to exhaust all administrative options before pursuing legal action against Pennington or his department. Bhandari acknowledged that the next step would be asking city officials for a subpoena. An Atlanta police spokeswoman, Sgt. Lisa Keyes, could not be reached for comment Thursday evening. (Has anyone else ever noticed that this woman - the official Atlanta P.D. spokeswoman - is notoriously hard to reach for comment?!?)
As board members peppered Bhandari with questions, he suggested that it would be better to discuss their legal strategy in private. Earlier in the meeting, one of the more vocal members of the board, Vice Chairman Seth Kirschenbaum, described the Atlanta Police Department’s efforts as an attempt “to destroy this board.” If the amendment passes restricting Review Board access to police documents, Kirschenbaum said, “then we have been had, and we have, in a sense, been made fools of.”
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