When voters last month approved Question E, they sealed a yearslong campaign for Baltimore to regain full control of its police department.

For the first time since 1860, local advocates who wanted to change how the Baltimore Police Department was governed would no longer have to trek to Annapolis and convince state lawmakers. Instead, they won the ability to lobby their own City Council.

Over the weekend, the reshaping of that political landscape resulted in its first ripple effect: the recent announcement that the city’s Civilian Review Board, Baltimore’s original police oversight entity founded in 1999, would be shuttered.

The announcement — spurred by the city Law Department’s reading of how the council re-wrote its legislative authority over the Police Department — took the board’s members by surprise, jolting already-tense conversations around police accountability and leaving elected leaders at a crossroads.

The Civilian Review Board was the first of its kind in Baltimore: a community-led oversight panel that could weigh in on police misconduct, subpoena documents and conduct independent investigations. The board, however, has been limited in scope and without much power to enforce its directives. To that end, it has been largely relegated to a supporting role in recent years, after a 2021 state law mandated that each county and Baltimore City create a new “police accountability board” and an accompanying “administrative charging committee” to review and recommend charges in police misconduct cases.

But in recent months, Baltimore’s charging committee has grown increasingly frustrated with its lack of independence from city government. Members have stressed that the Police Department’s internal investigations move slowly, causing the agency to provide documentation at the eleventh hour, just as the cases are set to expire.

For some police reform advocates, the committee’s struggles are a predictable result of its reliance on the Police Department. And the solution was obvious: strengthen the new Police Accountability Board by infusing it with the independent investigators and subpoena powers of the Civilian Review Board, then have the review board close up shop, as it had become duplicative.

“That has been our goal all along,” said Natalie Novak, an attorney and member of the Civilian Review Board. “We don’t need to exist, but we are trying to protect this very real power that is a vital part of actual police oversight. You can’t have police oversight based on a report by a police officer.”

It didn’t work out that way.

The task of transferring legislative authority from state lawmakers in Annapolis back to Baltimore lawmakers proved difficult, requiring two ballot questions, changes to state law, and a rewriting of sections of the city charter. The language in state law justifying the existence of the Civilian Review Board was never carried over to the city charter when the council this year passed legislation reestablishing local control of the Police Department, resulting in the old board’s pending closure at the end of the year, elected officials said.

Caught by surprise

The news that the Civilian Review Board was shuttering “blindsided” its members, Novak said.

The board announced over the weekend that it would continue to investigate and process police misconduct complaints through Dec. 31. Complaints currently being investigated will be completed before the board shuts down.

In a news release, the board said that it had conducted more than 1,400 investigations of police misconduct, and that its “work has demonstrated the vital importance of having civilian investigators who operate independently from the police department.”

City Councilman Mark Conway, chair of the council’s public safety committee, wrote the legislation reestablishing local control. He said it was his understanding that the administrative charging committee has “all the powers that the Civilian Review Board had, including subpoena power,” not to mention far more sway in charging decisions in police misconduct cases.

Still, Conway said he wanted to better understand the administrative charging committee’s need for more resources and more time to review cases, so he planned to call a hearing on that topic in the near future.

“That’s what we should really be focused on, going forward,” Conway said.

The District 4 councilman added that it’s his understanding that the administrative charging committee could likely make use of independent investigators currently working for the Civilian Review Board.

“The Civilian Review Board sunsetting is not necessarily a bad thing, I think it’s actually a good thing,” Conway said. “Now we can focus our efforts and resources and attention to a body that has a real ability to hold folks accountable.”

City Council faces ‘first major test’

Jesmond Riggins, a civil rights attorney who once supported the Civilian Review Board as a city staffer and now sits on the administrative charging committee, is one of two members of that committee calling for the newly empowered City Council to create an independent office for police accountability — a recommendation dating back to 2018.

While Riggins said he understood Conway’s position, he added that he disagreed with his conclusion that the review board’s powers already lie with the charging committee.

The way Riggins sees it, the larger Police Accountability Board should have independent investigators and subpoena power. It would be up to that community-led board, under Riggins’ vision, to decide whether or not to launch an investigation. That investigation would be conducted outside of the Police Department, then sent to the charging committee.

Losing the Civilian Review Board without preserving its powers, Riggins said, would “leave a huge void unless decisive steps are taken.”

“At its core, this is Baltimore’s first major test of the local control power it fought so hard to regain,” he said.

A spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Scott said it’s unlikely to be necessary to transfer additional powers to the Police Accountability Board because the charging committee already has subpoena power and the larger board could utilize investigators working outside the Police Department.

“Mayor Scott’s commitment to robust oversight of BPD has been clear throughout his tenure, not just as mayor but in all elected offices he’s held,” said Bryan Doherty, the mayor’s spokesperson. “That commitment stands, and the administration is confident that the necessary accountability work will continue uninterrupted.”