Sunday, July 12, 2009 | Opinion
SP Who serves on the citizen review board?

It’s supposed to be made up of “11 members who represent the diversity of this community," but it's not.

By Stephanie Ramage

When the Citizen Review Board launched last fall, some Atlantans were keen on the idea of a group of citizens being authorized to investigate “complaints by members of the public of alleged abusive language, false arrest, false imprisonment, harassment, use of excessive force, serious bodily injury, and death as a result of the actions of a sworn employee of the police department or corrections,” as the board’s establishment ordinance states.

I didn’t see anything wrong with such a board, even though the District Attorney, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are already entrusted with such inquiries.

Then, the CRB pushed for access to confidential documents related to ongoing investigations of criminal incidents involving police officers. Again, I had no concerns. I am an outspoken supporter of the Georgia Open Records Act, and I criticized the Georgia Supreme Court’s unhealthy narrowing of the law in a piece titled “The Georgia Supreme Court’s Terrible Ruling,” published Dec. 23, 2008.

But recently, I have become curious about who, exactly, would be getting those records. Police, after all, are not some monolithic entity. They are people with families just like the rest of us, and their concerns regarding privacy should count for no less than the concerns that anyone else might have. Indeed, for them, the potential for a disclosure of confidential job-related information to bring actual harm to themselves, their spouses and children is much greater than the danger such a disclosure might present for someone who, for example, does marketing for a living.

The city’s code says all city board members, not just CRB members, have to take an oath that they will fulfill their duties “impartially,” but without transparency about who they are and what they do, how would anyone know if they had a conflict of interest—a partiality problem—or not?

So, who are the members of the Citizen Review Board? According to the city ordinance that established the board, it’s supposed to be made up of “11 members who represent the diversity of this community.”

A simple Google search shows that at least eight of the board’s 11 members are black; the rest are white. Yet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2007 American Community Survey, the city of Atlanta is less than 57 percent black. 

Four of the board’s members are attorneys. Medical malpractice attorney Rod Edmonds formerly worked for Johnnie Cochran’s law firm. Defense attorney Seth Kirschenbaum lists, on his firm’s site, a string of dismissals and acquittals—among them, one involving a police officer accused of distributing cocaine—and suppression of evidence in a number of drug cases. Sharese Shields practices commercial litigation. Charis Johnson is an attorney.

Owen Montague is a marketing director who hosted a blog on then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s Organizing for America site. Heather Fatzinger, who is leaving the board, is a Spelman grad who works in public relations. LaShawn Hoffman is running for City Council from District 4, and if you were wondering about his political leanings, you need look no further than his Facebook page, which states: “Liberal.” Capt. J.L. Booker, the sole law enforcement representative on the board, is retired from the College Park police department.

Information available for Joy Morrissey and John Michael is ambiguous.

I asked CRB member Kathy Crawford if she’d be amenable to the idea of having her resume posted publicly so citizens could learn more about her, and she initially told me “No,” but then she averred that  the CRB plans to post photos and bios of its members on a website soon, anyway.

That’s good, but it’s more important for the citizens of Atlanta to know who’s being nominated for the city’s boards, including the CRB, before the nominations become appointments. The resumes of all prospective board appointees, not just to the CRB, ought to be prominently posted under a heading that says “Board Nominees” for a period of at least 60 days on the City of Atlanta’s Web site, so citizens have time to review them and raise any concerns they may have.
A few days before the Committee on Council met on July 6, I glanced through its agenda and saw that Charis Johnson, president of the League of Women Voters, serves on the CRB as the appointee of the Gate City Bar Association. However, Johnson recently made an appointment to the board on behalf of the League of Women Voters (to replace the outgoing Fatzinger). So the league has not only its president serving on the 11-member board, but also its appointee. That is, in effect, two seats filled by the League of Women Voters, although according to the CRB’s bylaws, the league gets only one appointment to the board. The bylaws, however, rely upon the city code, and the code apparently contains nothing to avert such tangles.

I filed an ethics complaint about the matter to find out for sure. The office’s investigation continues as of this writing. SP

Stephanie Ramage is News Editor of The Sunday Paper.