A board of citizens appointed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino more than six months ago to review citizen complaints of police misconduct is ready to begin taking cases.
The three-member panel named in January has received training on police procedures with a focus on use-of-force guidelines. The Police Department has hired a liaison who will handle case flow and communication with complainants. Citizens can ask the board to look into complaints starting this week.
The panel's activation ends a long battle by community leaders who fought for an independent body to review allegations against police, and many hailed it as a beginning.
But it is also being criticized as weak and too entwined with the Police Department to be truly independent. The board cannot conduct its own investigations or field citizen complaints that have not first gone through police. The panel's headquarters is in the Internal Affairs Division of the Police Department.
The board will automatically review cases that allege serious police misconduct. The Internal Affairs Division is determining which cases are serious enough to warrant automatic review. Because of confidentiality agreements required by police lawyers, board members are banned from speaking publicly about the cases they do review.
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