After bitter debate, New Castle County Council approves the creation of a police review board
The New Castle County Council on Tuesday voted to create a civilian-led police advisory board — a first for the county and the latest in a string of policy moves sparked three years ago by the nationwide protests that followed the police murder of George Floyd.
The vote followed a bitter debate at Tuesday’s council meeting that featured the police chief decrying mistrust of his officers, and a councilman calling a recent police shooting an “execution.”
Ultimately, councilmembers voted 10 to 0, with two abstaining, in favor of creating a 13-member advisory board that will hold public meetings and issue an annual report that reviews police actions and policies, and makes recommendations for changes.
Though the council vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the ordinance, its passage followed months of contentious negotiations between police reformers and representatives of police that predictably left neither side completely satisfied.
The contentiousness continued on Tuesday with a surprise announcement from the county police chief, Colonel Joseph Bloch, that he opposed the ordinance, and with councilmembers debating whether to postpone the vote to a later date.
That suggestion prompted Councilman Jea Street – a longtime advocate for police reform – to issue a warning to his colleagues: Either pass the ordinance now, or “we’ll have to look to the courts to run the police department.”
“I’m not tabling it. I’m not going to beg for you all to vote for it. Whatever happens, happens,” Street said.
He argued that postponing the creation of the review board could enable future lawsuits against the county, noting a recent $1-million settlement that county attorneys struck with the family of Lymond Moses, who was killed by police two years ago.
Street also asserted that the county will have “to pay a lot more than a million dollars for what I call the 19-second execution on Maryland Avenue” — an apparent reference to the March police shooting death of Andrew Edelmann.
At one point in the meeting, Council President Karen Hartley-Nagle said Street was out of order with his comments. Street retorted that “the police have been out of order for the whole 50 years that I have been playing in the arena.”
Should police be members of the review board?
The creation of the police review board comes in response to a law passed in June by state lawmakers that required local departments to create “public accountability commissions with non-officer members.”
In response, county officials first met with police to write an initial draft of the ordinance, according to testimony from Brian Boyle, senior policy director for County Executive Matt Meyer.
Later, members of several civic groups, including the NAACP and the ACLU, were invited to offer their opinions, Boyle said.
“This was a lively discussion, as you can imagine, and these groups provided constructive feedback. Some of which was incorporated into the ordinance … and some of it was not,” Boyle said.
Among the issues hotly debated was whether police officers could be members of the board. Ultimately, the county struck a compromise to allow two non-voting members from the ranks of police.
The makeup of the review board appeared to be the cause of Bloch’s opposition to the measure. In his testimony Tuesday, he said the board should not only include police as full members, but also should require that all nominees to the board take a police training course.
During his testimony, Street pressed Bloch about how the review board will be able to effectively operate with a chief who opposes its existence.
Bloch turned defensive in response, arguing that it was police reformers who have been intransigent in their opposition to law enforcement.
“I was told that they wouldn’t want me on the board because they couldn’t sit in the same room as a police officer,” Bloch said in response.
Street then turned the conversation to what many see as the heart of the debate over policing.
“Isn’t it the harsh reality that during this administration there have been more uses of deadly force than in any other comparable period of time in the history of the department?” Street asked Bloch.
“Absolutely, and that should be a concern to you on council,” Bloch responded.
Bloch’s opposition to the measure surprised many, including Shyanne Miller from the NAACP, who helped to negotiate the final draft of the ordinance.
In testimony to the council on Tuesday, Miller urged the council not to delay the vote, even as she was dissatisfied that the compromise proposal lacked “power to hold officers accountable.”
“Community people are asking for accountability and you gave them an advisory board,” Miller said.
Two hours after testimonies from Miller and others, the county council approved the measure to create the review board.
Councilmembers David Carter and Brandon Toole abstained from the vote.
Meyer, the county executive, is expected to sign the ordinance into law.