Bluefield City Attorney Brian Cochran said the board still functions.

"The main benefit is it's an avenue to protect our citizens if they are not satisfied with an internal investigation," he said.

Review board methods

There is a range of civilian oversight models that fit into two overlapping groups, said Philip Eure, president of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement and head of Washington, D.C.'s, Office of Complaints.

The first are investigator-type models that have a separate staff with civilian investigators, often lawyers, who investigate complaints of police misconduct.

"This is the traditional model. They have professional staffs separate from the police department. Sometimes they have a board that works in connection with them," he said.

The second type are auditor or monitor models, which don't do their own investigation of cases but review investigations done by police and issue reports based on their reviews of investigations. These models are cheaper to run, Eure said.

"They don't have the resources to redo every case; they pick and choose cases," he said. "They've been in vogue the last several years."

There are all sorts of hybrids of those models, he said.

Dr. Samuel Walker, the author of the 2005 book "The New World of Police," favors the auditor model because, he says, they are better at looking at and fixing problems at their core. Auditor models are better at fixing the problems with training and management, he said. Walker believes too often investigator models end up blaming individual officers for systemic problems.

"If you look at individual complaints, if that's what its set up to do, it can make an officer the scapegoat," Walker said. "He gets blamed, but in reality, it's a management failure."

Eure said that there is no one-size-fits-all model for police review. And he admits that in very small departments, it's not practical to set up a board.

In smaller cities, the investigatory work often gets contracted out with an attorney, even if someone is not hired fulltime, he said.

"If you are serious about having an objective investigation and having the public perception be that the investigation is being conducted in an objective way, then you have to outsource the investigation," Eure said.

Establishing civilian review boards is not about condemning law enforcement, said Meshea Poore, a Kanawha County public defender. It's about the public being able to fully trust law enforcement - even when there are accusations of brutality or wrongdoing by officers.

"I think we should always know what happened with the police," she said. "The purpose is we need to know. We need to be able to review and go back and see what went wrong so we don't make the same mistake again."

The issues go beyond review boards, Poore said. Police need to see and be seen as members of a community, not just as the law enforcers of a community.

"It doesn't matter how much we talk or how many review boards we set up, not everyone is going to trust them," she said. "But we have to do something."

Reach Gary Harki at gha...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5163.

The video details a dark, tragic scene where two young men die. One of the deaths, police say, was a justified killing, and the other, an accident.

When asked at the news conference if there was any concern about the sheriff's department investigating the Charleston Police, with whom they work very closely, Charleston Mayor Danny Jones said "no."

"The FBI could come in to investigate any time they want to," he said.

The investigation was impartial and fair, and there was no need for anyone else to investigate the matter, he said.

"We're not going to have a citizen review board," Jones said.

"The Jump Out Boys"

For a brief period, Charleston did have a civilian review board, according to a report by the West Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights titled "Coping with Police Misconduct."

In August 1998, Charleston Mayor Kemp Melton started an unofficial five-member civilian review board. Melton said he was creating the board as an advisory body in response to several allegations that city police were insensitive to racial issues.

In the first 11 months of 1998, there were 24 allegations of the use of excessive force by Charleston police officers, according to the report. Of those, seven resulted in investigations, and charges were sustained in three of the cases.

In one of the incidents, Officer Darrell Lambert eventually pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges for beating two prisoners outside City Hall. He also agreed to resign from the Police Department.

In December 1998, Prosecutor Bill Forbes asked the U.S. Attorney's Office to conduct an independent investigation of the city's Street Crimes Unit. Known as "The Jump Out Boys" and "The Four Horsemen," the unit illegally searched houses and cars, Forbes alleged, arresting people on trumped-up charges, among other things. The unit was headed by Sgt. Brad Rinehart, who is now chief of police in South Charleston.

At the time, Charleston was one of only 10 cities nationally being investigated by the special litigation section of the Justice Department's civil-rights division. Forbes compared tactics of the street crimes unit with "Hitler's Gestapo or Stalin's KGB."

In 2000, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city, requesting information on the number of misconduct cases and information regarding the civilian review board's membership and function. The city provided the list, but after a legal battle to release the information to the public, the Charleston City Council dissolved the board in August of that year.

"To protect our citizens"

Only one city in West Virginia has a civilian review board - Bluefield.

In September 1998, Robert Ellison, a 20-year-old black man, was beaten and dragged by two white Bluefield police officers outside a nightclub, leaving him paralyzed below the neck, according to the report by the West Virginia Advisory Committee, "Coping with Police Misconduct."

Ellison settled a suit against the city in June 2000. The city agreed to pay him $1 million, increase its efforts to hire more minority police and establish a civilian review panel to review police misconduct investigations.

According to the advisory committee report from 2004, the commission meets quarterly and prepares annual reports, but doesn't make specific disciplinary recommendations. From 2000 to 2004, no instances of misconduct were reported to the commission, according to the report.

Bluefield City Attorney Brian Cochran said the board still functions.

"The main benefit is it's an avenue to protect our citizens if they are not satisfied with an internal investigation," he said.

Review board methods

There is a range of civilian oversight models that fit into two overlapping groups, said Philip Eure, president of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement and head of Washington, D.C.'s, Office of Complaints.

The first are investigator-type models that have a separate staff with civilian investigators, often lawyers, who investigate complaints of police misconduct.

"This is the traditional model. They have professional staffs separate from the police department. Sometimes they have a board that works in connection with them," he said.

The second type are auditor or monitor models, which don't do their own investigation of cases but review investigations done by police and issue reports based on their reviews of investigations. These models are cheaper to run, Eure said.

"They don't have the resources to redo every case; they pick and choose cases," he said. "They've been in vogue the last several years."

There are all sorts of hybrids of those models, he said.

Dr. Samuel Walker, the author of the 2005 book "The New World of Police," favors the auditor model because, he says, they are better at looking at and fixing problems at their core. Auditor models are better at fixing the problems with training and management, he said. Walker believes too often investigator models end up blaming individual officers for systemic problems.

"If you look at individual complaints, if that's what its set up to do, it can make an officer the scapegoat," Walker said. "He gets blamed, but in reality, it's a management failure."

Eure said that there is no one-size-fits-all model for police review. And he admits that in very small departments, it's not practical to set up a board.

In smaller cities, the investigatory work often gets contracted out with an attorney, even if someone is not hired fulltime, he said.

"If you are serious about having an objective investigation and having the public perception be that the investigation is being conducted in an objective way, then you have to outsource the investigation," Eure said.

Establishing civilian review boards is not about condemning law enforcement, said Meshea Poore, a Kanawha County public defender. It's about the public being able to fully trust law enforcement - even when there are accusations of brutality or wrongdoing by officers.

"I think we should always know what happened with the police," she said. "The purpose is we need to know. We need to be able to review and go back and see what went wrong so we don't make the same mistake again."

The issues go beyond review boards, Poore said. Police need to see and be seen as members of a community, not just as the law enforcers of a community.

"It doesn't matter how much we talk or how many review boards we set up, not everyone is going to trust them," she said. "But we have to do something."

Reach Gary Harki at gha...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5163.