27 Nov

Charleston Public Safety Committee agrees to start over on police audit

Posted by in CAJM, Criminal Justice Reform

November 27, 2017. Charleston City Paper.

Activists walked out of City Hall feeling vindicated on Monday morning after the Public Safety Committee voted unanimously to remove a police department audit from Novak Consulting’s task list.

Novak Consulting was hired in February to conduct a performance audit of all city operations, as reported in February. The city-wide audit was a key vow of Mayor John Tecklenburg’s campaign. But civil rights and social justice advocates have repeatedly painted the firm as too inexperienced to gauge the intricacies of racial bias.

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27 Oct

North Charleston moves forward with new DOJ agreement as activist groups demand police assessment

Posted by in CAJM, Criminal Justice Reform

October 27, 2017. Charleston City Paper.

North Charleston City Council unanimously voted to approve a new memorandum of understanding with the Department of Justice, further cementing the federal agency’s step away from collaborative reform with the city’s police department.

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28 Sep

Citizens Taking The Next Step To Retrieve COPS Report

Posted by in CAJM, Criminal Justice Reform, Minority Rights

September 28, 2017. The Chronicle.

A coalition formed since the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) announced it will not release its report on its assessment of the North Charleston Police Department initiated last year, is calling for community engagement to force the federal agency to produce the document.

A coalition of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc. (NAACPLDF), the North Charleston Branch NAACP, The Charleston Area Justice Ministry (CAJM), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Community Resource Center last week called on citizens to contact local, state and federal elected officials asking them to push for release of the COPS report.

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20 Sep

Advocates call for release of federal report on North Charleston police

Posted by in CAJM, Criminal Justice Reform, Minority Rights

September 20, 2017. The Post and Courier.

Staking a public claim to a yearlong assessment of North Charleston police, local civil rights advocates demanded the review’s release, despite the federal government’s decision to abandon the effort.

Their call came days after the Department of Justice announced an overhaul of the Collaborative Reform Initiative at the agency’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, essentially excising the reform component.

The program’s end shouldn’t stop federal officials from releasing a document that could highlight shortcomings of the North Charleston Police Department and aid local reformers’ mission to bring lasting change, the advocates argued.

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18 Jun

Charleston needs a qualified, independent police audit

Posted by in CAJM, Criminal Justice Reform, Minority Rights

June 18, 2017. The Post and Courier.

What should Charleston do about citizens’ repeated allegations of racial bias by police? Mayor Tecklenburg seemed untroubled by such reports in his May 30th Post & Courier column celebrating the city’s “racial progress.” He praised the police chief for leading the Illumination Project since 2015, a period of “remarkable forward motion for our police department and the community it serves.” He also noted that “an independent, third party bias-based policing audit” had just begun.

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