Toothless Tiger or Caged Lion? Citizen Oversight as a Site of Police Resistance and Civic Engagement

• In Event: 1540 - Community

Abstract

In December 1993, the Syracuse Common Council convened in a regularly scheduled monthly meeting to vote on a wide array of local ordinances, including Local Law 11 which would establish the Syracuse Citizen Review Board (SCRB). At this meeting, approximately 100 uniformed Syracuse Police Department officers filled the city’s small Common Council chambers to publicly demonstrate their collective opposition to citizen review. Roughly 150 engaged community members, whose formal organizing work on this issue began as early as 1979, also crowded into the small chambers to show their strong support of a Council vote in support of the new oversight agency. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, 22 interviews, and a unique archival dataset, this article examines this rare case of the lawmaking power of everyday people and contributes key insights to better understand where, when, and why citizen-led law enforcement oversight agencies emerge. Findings explain how converging social and historical factors established the SCRB as a semi-formal organization in the organizational field of policing, an important and underexplored organizational type. Findings also indicate city obligations, strategies, obstacles, and limited outcomes in how the SCRB goes about securing the human, material, social-organizational, cultural, and moral resources that it needs to function and effectively oversee police behavior. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of the SCRB’s 25-year history as law on the books and consider the broader nationally applicable lessons for other communities actively seeking citizen-led police oversight.

Author

• Theresa Rocha Beardall, Cornell University