OKLAHOMA CITY — The City of Oklahoma City’s newly created police complaint oversight committee, the Community Public Safety Advisory Board, saw (most of) its ward-specific board appointees approved by the City Council on Tuesday, February 13th.
But, the vote happened after a comment period in which multiple council members raised questions of transparency, efficacy, and ease of use.
The Community Public Safety Advisory Board (CPSAB) replaces the OKCPD’s longstanding Citizens Advisory Board as the body that will receive citizen complaints and oversee investigations regarding city police, including claims of harassment, profiling, and unnecessary use of force.
The new City Council-appointed board is a result of an independent study conducted by 21CP Solutions, a Chicago-based consulting firm that aims to help cities develop better policing strategies and greater police force oversight through citywide studies and recommendations.
Over the nearly two years that the new advisory board has been in development, questions have been regularly raised regarding the clarity of its intent and even the board’s official name.
Following a contentious discussion period with council members Nikki Nice (Ward 7) and James Cooper (Ward 2) directing concerns at Mayor Holt, six of the seven councilors approved appointees for the CPSAB, with Nice abstaining in protest of what she called a “watering down” of the board’s intended purpose.
“This is my protest about this particular board,” Nice said from the dais. “I do not agree with what is taking place and how this particular body is moving forward.”
‘A practical challenge’
21CP Solutions was invited to conduct a study of the city’s policing tactics and accountability in January of 2021, following widespread protests throughout the previous year criticizing the OKCPD and addressing that department’s ranking as the second highest in the nation for police-involved killings.
21CP presented its final report to the City Council in March of 2022, including an intensive breakdown of thirty-nine recommendations for ways that the city could create greater oversight and accountability of its police force.
Central to these was the recommendation that city government “assess the membership design and transparency of the Citizens Advisory Board” and that the public should be made better aware of its existence and availability, stating:
“Though accountability is critical when it comes to police misconduct for most Americans—and, by extension, OKC residents—a majority of our city’s residents know next-to-nothing about our existing OKCPD civilian oversight board, its purview, and its operating structure.”
Presenting the report’s findings and recommendations in person before the City Council in March of 2022, 21CP’s Brian Maxey laid out the importance and difficulty of effectively redesigning the city’s policing oversight and complaint system for citizens.
“Our takeaway is that creating accountable, equitable community safety services is not a political issue,” Maxey said, “it’s a practical challenge, and getting it right is important to all of OKC.”
Naming concerns
For city leaders – including City Council, Mayor Holt, and City Manager Craig Freeman – that challenge took the form of nearly two years of negotiation and development, including the decision to entirely dissolve the Citizens Advisory Board in May 2023 and replace it with a newly designed council-appointed board.
In the time that the new Community Public Safety Advisory Board has taken shape, some City Council members have repeatedly raised concerns about the new board’s clarity of intent and ease of use for city residents attempting to file a complaint, in particular focusing on what they say is an unclear name.
“I do have concerns,” Ward 6 City Councilor JoBeth Hamon told Free Press. “Changing the name of the board to ‘public safety advisory’ rather than continuing with the previous name, or incorporating the word ‘accountability’ into the board name, does feel like an attempt to obfuscate the purpose of the board and doesn’t seem intuitive for community members to know what the board will work on.”
These concerns were echoed by Councilwoman Nice at the City Council meeting on February 13th as she reiterated that councilors had requested the word ‘accountability’ be included in the new board’s name and asserted that the Mayor’s office had chosen and approved the final name without council input.
Complaint filing questions
Ward 2 City Councilor Cooper’s concerns on the 13th were focused on the lack of any clear way for residents to currently file a complaint about city police with the new CPSAB online, ostensibly the primary reason for the new board’s existence.
Discussing his own inability to locate a formal complaint form on the OKC Public Safety Partnership webpage, Cooper reiterated his questions directly to Mayor Holt and City Manager Freeman:
“The very simple ask that I had – and that the community had – was where do they go when they have a concern in terms of a concerning encounter with law enforcement?”
Freeman invited Assistant City Manager Jason Ferbrache to address Cooper’s questions.
“The complaint form that you’d requested, it is on that OKC Public Safety Partnership webpage,” Ferbrache said. “It’s under ‘Recommendation 17.’ So it is on the front page. However, hearing what you’re saying today, if you would like it at the top of the page to be even more prevalent, that’s certainly something we can do.”
As of this writing, the link to which Ferbrache referred is still listed more than halfway down the OKC Public Safety Partnership home page under “Recommendation 17.”
Free Press reached Ferbrache by phone. He said that changes to the webpage’s layout – including a repositioning of the complaint form link – have been requested of the site administrators by the city, but that those changes “haven’t happened yet.”
Currently, the available link on the OKC Public Safety Partnership webpage redirects to the OKCPD’s page of the okc.gov website, which contains a separate link for the department’s “Formal Citizen Complaint Form.” Neither that form nor the OKCPD webpage make any reference to the CPSAB.
Ferbrache confirmed to Free Press that, under the newly established CPSAB guidelines, citizen complaints will still go directly to OKCPD and that the new board will review and consider them after collection by the police department.
‘Cautiously Optimistic’
Despite these concerns, city leaders and advocates remain hopeful that the newly established CPSAB can still work to provide a level of oversight and accountability found by 21CP’s study to be sorely lacking from Oklahoma City policing.
“I’m cautiously optimistic about some of the work the new board will be able to do,” Hamon told us, “and am especially glad for the change to hosting public meetings and having ward-specific appointments with terms.”
To learn more about the 21CP study and the newly established Community Public Safety Advisory Board, or to file a policing complaint using the “Formal Citizen Complaint Form” on the OKCPD’s page, visit okc.gov/government/okc-public-safety-partnership. (The page is showing intermittent errors at publication.)
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
