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43 Colum. J.L. & Soc. Probs. 1 (2009-2010)
Arrested Oversight: A Comparative Analysis and Case Study of How Civilian Oversight of the Police Should Function and How It Fails

handle is hein.journals/collsp43 and id is 3 raw text is: Arrested Oversight: A Comparative Analysis and Case Study of How Civilian Oversight of the Police Should Function and How it Fails BY STEPHEN CLARKE* Police misconduct is a multi-faceted problem that no city can permanently solve, but every city must struggle with. Local politicians, courts and po- lice departments generally do not do enough to punish and deter routine acts of police misconduct or to reform problematic police department poli- cies. As a result, many municipalities across America have used civilian oversight of the police to address the problem of police misconduct. Un- fortunately, numerous civilian oversight bodies have failed and been ab- olished while others have endured despite being roundly condemned as failures. Existing studies of civilian oversight have done little to indicate how failed civilian oversight bodies can be and should be reformed. In or- der to build a roadmap for reform, this Note details the oversight gap that civilian oversight has been used to fill and explores strengths and weak- nesses of different types of civilian oversight bodies. It then argues that New York City's existing civilian oversight system has failed and proposes a series of reforms to improve how New York City's civilian oversight sys- tem functions. I. INTRODUCTION Police misconduct is a persistent, multi-faceted problem that no city can permanently solve.1 Cities must constantly struggle * The author would like to thank Professor Jeffrey Fagan, Rachel Deutsch, Theo- dore Holt, Kathryn Davis, the investigators of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, and the complainants whose stories inspired this work. 1. See 6 THE N.Y. CITY COMM'N TO INVESTIGATE ALLEGATIONS OF POLICE CORRUPTION & THE ANTI-CORRUPTION PROCS OF THE POLICE DEP'T, NEW YORK CITY POLICE CORRUPTION INVESTIGATION COMMISSIONS, 1894-1994, 1 (Gabriel J. Chin ed.,

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