BALTIMORE — As Baltimore sunsets a decades-old committee probing police misconduct, the city’s three civilian-led law enforcement accountability boards are at odds with Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration over the future of independent oversight investigations.

Scott’s office argued that the looming dissolution of the city’s Civilian Review Board will help streamline, rather than threaten, independent probes of police misconduct complaints. But members of the city’s three police oversight boards alleged at a rainy Friday news conference that the city’s civilian oversight framework is poised to lose the power to investigate law enforcement agencies unless city lawmakers pass a compromise.

“We have to sit down; we have to come together and figure out how we continue to move the pendulum forward in this whole police accountability mechanism,” Ray Kelly, executive director of the Citizens Policing Project and vice chair of Baltimore’s Administrative Charging Committee, said at the news conference.

The dispute over certain investigative powers comes as the Civilian Review Board takes its final cases and prepares to dissolve next year. That board was formed in 1999 and is tasked with conducting its own investigations of police misconduct complaints, reviewing them and sending disciplinary recommendations to the heads of police departments. It’s being dissolved because of local control legislation that also wiped the board from law books.

Members of that board and its successors, the city’s Police Accountability Board and the Administrative Charging Committee, say that the two newer boards have to rely on police departments’ investigations of their own officers — and wait for those reports to be completed — because state and local laws don’t expressly permit the civilian committees to conduct independent probes. Losing the Civilian Review Board without passing new laws, they say, would further hamstring the city’s civilian-led oversight framework by eliminating fully independent investigations of complaints.

“While I sincerely hope that the [Civilian Review Board] can continue its invaluable work,” said Jamal Turner, vice chair of the Police Accountability Board, “we must also acknowledge the reality we face, and the need for immediate action to safeguard accountability in our policing system.”

Scott’s office argues that no such powers are being lost.

The mayor’s office said in a statement that the administration’s position is that the new boards “retain the same level of independence and investigatory power” that the Civilian Review Board had, including the power to issue subpoenas. With the older board sunsetting, the city said it will now “have the ability to streamline oversight efforts and place all its resources” behind the combination of newer boards, which have been established throughout the state due to a police reform package passed in 2021.

The 2021 state law allows administrative charging committees to review police’s internal investigations of misconduct allegations involving a member of the public then rule if an officer should face administrative charges and recommend a penalty.

In executing those duties, the law says, the committees can “request information or action from the law enforcement agency that conducted the investigation,” including “requiring additional investigation and the issuance of subpoenas.”

Local ordinances lay out essentially the same rules for Baltimore’s Administrative Charging Committee but require the Civilian Review Board to base its decisions on independent probes conducted by staff investigators. New laws allow the Administrative Charging Committee to subpoena for additional information, but nothing allows them to initiate their own investigation outside the internal police probe, said Jesmond Riggins, an attorney and member of the city’s Police Accountability Board.

“It really says the opposite,” said Riggins. “I understand [the mayor’s administration’s] position, but when you read the law and know how the law works … I just don’t see it.”

The city’s attorneys also represent both Baltimore Police and the Police Accountability Board, another point of contention between the Scott administration and the police oversight committees.

Former NFL linebacker Aaron Maybin, now an artist and activist who serves on the Civilian Review Board, said at Friday’s news conference that his board’s investigatory powers have “consistently been a point of contention,” as it gives “civilians a true independent eye to investigate” and “threatens those who would abuse their positions of power.”

He mentioned news articles that have shown Baltimore Police are forwarding their investigatory files too late, leaving little to no time for boards to request further information.

He offered three solutions to the issue — first, extending the Civilian Review Board’s authority to take new cases until investigatory powers are passed on to the new boards; second, establishing an independent office of police oversight with subpoena power; and third, authorizing the Police Accountability Board to appoint its own investigators and lawyers.

“Our work has demonstrated the vital importance of having civilian investigators who operate independently from the police department,” Maybin said, adding that the board was “happy to have” the newer committees stand with them in their efforts.

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