City hires consultant to guide panel
As the new Boulder Police Oversight Panel members prepare for their first meeting next week, they will soon begin working with a new consultant who will help them not only understand the panel’s limitations but how they can transcend them.
Boulder has hired Farah Muscadin, former director of the Office of Police Oversight in Austin, Texas, to guide the panel through possible ordinance revisions, provide feedback on trainings, design a community engagement process and help craft an updated job description for the independent police monitor position.
Muscadin will fill in as the city works to hire a new independent police monitor to replace Joey Lipari who resigned in September 2022. The city recently held a forum with three finalists for the position but ultimately decided none of the candidates were the right fit for the job.
“We had three very qualified candidates in separate areas, and we need that person who can really fit all of the areas,” said Aimee Kane, Boulder equity officer. “It’s not just somebody who’s really strong in doing internal investigations or not somebody who’s strong in just doing community engagement, but how do we do them both?”
Kane said Muscadin’s contract with the city last through the end of the year. She is paid $150 an hour. Because the independent monitor helps prepare the oversight panel’s annual report, Kane said she is unsure if there will be a 2022 report.
Sarah Huntley, spokesperson for the city, added that there are ongoing discussions about whether the panel can release truncated data from last year or if it will all be rolled into this year’s report.
“We just want to be honest with our resources, and our capacity is a little bit limited right now. But we do understand the community’s interest in that information,” she said.
Kane said the city has also spoken with former panelist Martha Wilson who has shown interest in helping with the community engagement process. Wilson resigned from the panel late last year in response to the panel’s lack of authority and ability to discuss specifics for a case.
“If I could waive a magic wand, I would probably be an oversight panel ambassador,” Wilson said.
“I would be comfortable being in meetings, helping with the onboarding process, answering any questions, especially because I was the Boulder conversations about community race coordinator. I would be comfortable leading those conversations, even amongst police staff. I feel like that might have the influence of the community on police rather than the current process which is trying to introduce police to community.”
Wilson said she’s waiting for the new oversight panel members to begin working on revisions to the ordinance before she begins working with the oversight panel because she believes the changes the Boulder City Council approved as part of an emergency ordinance are still too ambiguous.
Huntley said it’s still unclear how the changes passed by the City Council will affect both the panel’s and the independent police monitor’s abilities to speak about the cases they review while still maintaining the confidentiality of those involved.
“The fact that that question still exists is why there is a need for clarity,” she said.
Following questions from the community during the selection process for the new members of the oversight panel, the city, with assistance from Muscadin, will also begin working with panelists to review how a community-led selection committee chooses candidates to serve on the panel and whether all selection committee meetings should be public or not. Currently, the police oversight ordinance stipulates that deliberations made by the the selection committee to choose finalists are confidential.
“This will be an opportunity for us to assess some assumptions we made early on,” Huntley said. “(The selection committee) was seen as more of an ad hoc committee, and they weren’t the ones who were technically casting the vote to accept the recommendations — that was council, but now that we’ve gone through the process, we’ve understood some nuances about how it works. One of the things you should be doing anytime you look at reopening an ordinance and making changes is making sure that the elements that are in there comply with what our laws or requirements are.”
Kane said she believes the panel has a good group of community members who will help move its mission forward. Although, it has a long road ahead, the Police Oversight Panel is ready to get to work.
“We’re at a time where we’ve got a lot of things happening all at once, and it’s also a really great opportunity just to make the whole oversight mechanism as a whole more effective for everyone and (more) transparent because that was the goal from the outset,” she said.