Detroit Board of Police Commissioners meeting, Dec. 1, 2022
The board spent three hours in closed session discussing the police chief’s recommendation to place five officers on administrative leave, including four from the 12th Precinct. Ultimately, commissioners approved only placing one on leave. They also postponed voting on the leave of two officers on the officers’ request.
“What can we do as a board? Sit around this table, and all we do is just ask the same doggone questions every single Thursday, and people still die.”
Following the county prosecutor’s decision not to press charges against police officers who killed Porter Burks, the board and Chief of Police James White continued to point to a lack of mental health services in the city.
The Detroit Police Department (DPD) plans to centralize crisis intervention teams across the city. Chief of Police James White promised that nearly all team members will continue working in that capacity. However, commissioners were displeased the lack of communication in this process. White also emphasized that DPD’s crisis intervention is “not the solution to the mental health crisis in Detroit.”
Commissioner Linda Bernard criticized DPD’s policy of not permanently attaching citizen complaints to police officers’ personnel files, including exonerated complaints. Lt. Mark Young, president of the Detroit Police Lieutenants & Sergeants Association, passionately defended this policy.
A resident in the 11th Precinct complained of their neighborhood police officers being “ineffective” in resolving a conflict with a neighbor.
The board approved the promotion of dozens of police officers to the ranks of lieutenant, sergeant and detective.
Table of Contents
Documentation
The meeting was live-blogged on Mastodon and Twitter for Detroit Documenters, which offers its own report.
Documents available on Documenters.org, including the meeting agenda and more documentation by Bridget Scallen.
The previous meeting on Nov. 17 was documented by Ashley Williams and Damien Benson. The next meeting on Dec. 8 was documented by Alex Klaus and Meghan Rutigliano.
Visit the agency’s website for official information.
Related news articles
- “Lawsuit seeks to shoot down Detroit’s contracts with ShotSpotter surveillance tech”
Nov. 30, 2022, Steve Neavling, Detroit Metro Times - “No charges for Detroit officers who shot and killed Porter Burks”
Nov. 23, 2022, Sarah Cwiek, Michigan Radio - “Citizen complaint backlog against Detroit police could drag into 2023”
Nov. 21, 2022, Bryce Huffman, BridgeDetroit
Materials
Archived pages
Mastodon posts and meeting page are archived on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
Audio
The actual start of the meeting (3 p.m.) can be heard 30 minutes into the recording.
Images
Screenshots of online meeting. Due to limited resources, image descriptions are provided on request — contact me.
Meta
Page published Dec. 1, 2022.
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