PARC meets with city council members

PARC meets with city council members

Night off.

Over 20 cases have come before chattanooga's police advisory and review committee or "parc" since they started meeting in october.

It's the appointed board that reviews complaints against police and makes recommendations to the police chief on how to move forward.

News 12's dorothy sherman explains what they have been seeing so far and what could come in the future.

That's tonight's top local story.

Dsherman@wdef.com/dorothy sherman: "according to the board, in october they had 19 cases involving 23 officers and in november they've had 7 cases involving 9 officers with all but one case happening in 2020."

In a public safety committee meeting tuesday, chattanooga city council members hear from parc memberse on cases they've had so far.

Cases that about half are chain of command initiated complaints and the other half are complaints coming from citizens.

Parc chair kay baker: "of the cases that we looked at, there were non-citizen complaint cases where the conduct is significant enough that if the police can't police themselves and we can't help them do that then how can they properly police in the community that they are supposed to serve."

It's the non-citizen complaints brought to the committee that councilman russell gilbert says he's surprised by.

The parc replaces a board that had been reviewing all complaints.

Councilman russell gilbert: "i can't speak for all council people, but i would like to see more citizens driven complaints looking at policies that affect the citizens in our neighborhoods more so then something that hr and the police department should be handling."

Councilwoman carol berz asks parc chair kay baker if there has been any issues of citizens complaints not making it to the board.

Baker says she's not aware of any.

Parc chair kay baker: "one of the things we did talk about as a group was that there might be certain citizens that might not want to complain directly to the police department."

Citizens can submit complaints to the board.

They can also do so anonymously.

Council members are looking into creating a hotline or setting up a special email folks can use if they want to make a complaint.

Dsherman@wdef.com/dorothy sherman: "the parc will give a quarterly report in january.

By then they hope to have information, data on if their recommendation s to the police chief match up with his decisions on cases.

In chattanooga, dorothy sherman, news 12 now."

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