The Columbia City Council has received three applications to a newly vacated seat on the Citizens Police Review Board.
CPRB chairwoman Ellen LoCurto-Martinez said the City Council will interview the three applicants Jan. 25.
At the Jan. 12 meeting, board member Steve Weinberg officially stepped down from the CPRB. Weinberg said he gave up his part-time teaching position at MU last year to take care of his elderly parents, but he found he needed even more time.
“When they moved to Columbia in 2009, I had no sense of how badly everything would turn out for them and me,” Weinberg said. “I hoped resigning from MU would be adequate. But it has not been adequate, so now I’m shedding other responsibilities because of my parents’ health.”
The Citizens Police Review Board has plans to discuss the definition of misconduct and the controversial search warrants for nonviolent offenders at its Feb. 9 meeting.
LoCurto-Martinez said she expects a larger student turnout for this meeting because of the discussion of the city’s marijuana ordinance. At the last meeting, local attorney Dan Viets challenged the ordinance that limits local enforcement of misdemeanor marijuana possession.
“When we pressed Viets, it seemed like he wants to expand that ordinance,” LoCurto-Martinez said. “However, if they want to change that ordinance, they have to go through the City Council. We can’t do anything about it.”
She said the board will also discuss serving search warrants to nonviolent criminals at Viets’ request.
“Dan Viets brought up the issue of serving search warrants to nonviolent crimes a while ago, and we’re finally getting to it since we’ve had cases and such,” she said.
The board will continue to examine its definition of misconduct at its Feb. 9 meeting, per the request of CPD Chief Ken Burton, LoCurto-Martinez said.
“Burton first asked that we follow the Missouri statute of misconduct, but our legal counsel Fred Boeckmann gave his opinion that following that statue would limit the power of the board,” she said.
Burton retracted that recommendation and instead suggested the board use the Columbia Police Department’s specific code of conduct.
“We just want everything to gel together and share the same definition of misconduct,” CPD spokeswoman Jill Wieneke said. “We want our expectations to be very clear to the officers and the public. We want to remove the mystery and guesswork.”
Wieneke said Burton plans to post the entire code of conduct online so that in the case of alleged misconduct, Columbia residents can view the code of conduct themselves and see what part they feel was violated.
“After the meeting, we supplied the board with a copy of our code of conduct, and they’ll look it over and see what they think,” Wieneke said.