Iowa City Council increases number of members on police review board

IOWA CITY — Iowa City’s Community Police Review Board will be getting two more members after the Iowa City Council agreed to expand the board’s membership to seven.

The amendment to the review board ordinance also decreases the waiting period — from five years to two years — before a former member of the Iowa City Police Department may be appointed to the board.

The amendment gained final approval on a 6-1 vote Tuesday, with Megan Alter opposed.

Alter was concerned about decreasing the waiting period before a former police department employee could be appointed to the review board. She acknowledged the career experience such an appointee could bring but thought it could be difficult to separate from those experiences.

“I think ultimately it is very difficult to separate out some of those experiences within issues that may come before you or before any of us, putting ourselves in that role to be able to separate ourselves out fully and truly,” Alter said.

“With as few teeth as there are to a CPRB (Community Police Review Board) in this state right now, with all respect to my colleagues, this is something that I’m actually not OK with.”

The five-member review board, established in 1997, is to provide oversight of police misconduct investigations and assure those investigations are conducted in a fair, thorough and accurate manner.

When the board started, there was no waiting period for former police officers to be appointed. The council added a waiting period in 2003 after concerns about possible conflicts with current or recently employed officers.

The first version of the ordinance, which was discussed last month, looked at getting rid of the waiting period altogether, but the council amended it to have a two-year waiting period.

The city council has been working through 13 changes to the board, recommended by the board in December 2020.

Five of the recommendations were in conflict with state law, largely because disciplinary records are confidential.

One of the final recommendations left to address was the expanded membership.

At a work session in October, council members discussed the importance of having diverse membership on the board, as well as the value of having someone on the board with law enforcement experience. The waiting period was included in the ordinance change to broaden the pool for those with previous law enforcement experience.

Council member Pauline Taylor said she supports the emphasis on diverse membership and noted having someone on the board with a law enforcement background is not mandated.

The review board also requested an increase in funding to promote awareness of the board and increase accessibility. The council increased the board’s budget by $10,000 for fiscal 2023, to $60,596.

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