Columbia Citizens Police Review Board member Laura Gutiérrez Pérez publicly announced her resignation due to dissatisfaction with the board at a Columbia City Council meeting on Feb. 6.
“I would like to officially inform you of my resignation,” Gutiérrez Pérez said. “We deserve better, and we will get better. But I will not sit on a board that has no power to do what its ordinance claims it can do.”
The City Council established the CPRB in 2009 as an independent and external process to review actual or perceived misconduct within the Columbia Police Department. The board consists of eight seats, to which Columbia citizens can be appointed for a term of three years.
Gutiérrez Pérez was appointed to the board to fill a vacancy in mid 2022, and reappointed in October to serve until Nov. 1, 2024.
“I joined the board because I was under the impression that CPRB was a civilian oversight, and that we would have the power to look at appeals and give recommendations to the police department, and get data for the public, and really inform the public on their rights when it comes to a complaint against the police,” Gutiérrez Pérez said.
Gutiérrez Pérez said she noticed the board’s dysfunctional nature soon after she was appointed. The main function of the CPRB is to review appeals from the police chief’s decisions on alleged misconduct within the CPD. She said they had yet to see an appeal come through in the months she had been on the board, and that they lacked adequate information from either the City Council or the CPD to carry out their duties.
“I didn’t feel that we had the power to actually follow the ordinance,” Gutiérrez Pérez said. “I had been advocating for months and months that we needed to … rethink the ordinance and see how we could improve it.”
The CPRB disbanded last August after several contentious meetings and internal disagreements over community outreach. The board reunited on Feb. 1, for the first in a series of training sessions meant to focus the group’s efforts and resolve any underlying problems. Nonetheless, Gutiérrez Pérez feels that the training failed to address the core issues the board faces.
Though she has resigned from the board, Gutiérrez Pérez believes that the committee can find success through productive restructuring.
“I really hope that we move toward actually changing the ordinance so that it can be effective, because it is a lie to say that we have a Citizens Police Review Board if it doesn’t have the power to do that,” Gutiérrez Pérez said.
Edited by Annie Goldman | agoldman@themaneater.com
Copy edited by Mary Philip