Boulder City Council to reconsider Police Oversight Panel candidates after resident pushback

Jan. 14—The Boulder City Council on Thursday will reconsider the 10 candidates selected — six panelists and four alternates — to serve on the Boulder Police Oversight Panel after the selection committee reviewed and reconfirmed its choices at the Council's request.

The City Council, as part of its consent agenda on Thursday, will vote on the Police Oversight selection committee's recommendations for the panelists and alternates after the item was removed from the consent agenda in December and sent back to the selection committee for further review and explanation of its choices. The Council wanted the committee, with the guidance of the city attorney, to review all candidates or all recommended panelists to ensure each met the requirements outlined in the panel's ordinance to be eligible for the role. The Council also asked the committee to include written explanations of the steps it took when choosing new members before being brought back before the Council.

Following the city's inquiry for a written explanation of the candidate selections, the committee reviewed all the candidates to ensure that their backgrounds matched what is required by the Police Oversight Ordinance, according to materials sent to the City Council on Friday afternoon. The selection committee also met virtually Dec. 19 with Boulder City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde and an official from the city attorney's office to discuss the Council's request. The committee also reviewed public comments that were sent before the Dec. 15 council meeting, and, ultimately, stood by its initial recommendations.

"I thought it was very shortsighted to send (the public comments) out to the selection committee when the comments were also against oversight in general," said Jude Landsman, who represents the NAACP Boulder County chapter on the selection committee. "It was counterproductive."

Emails prompt candidate review

The City Council's request for further review of the candidates came after it received a slew of emails regarding one candidate selected — Lisa Sweeney-Miran, who also serves as vice president for the Boulder Valley Board of Education.

"She's a highly qualified candidate, and it was a unanimous choice," Landsman said. "It's disturbing that the City Council is threatened by her. She clearly has integrity."

City Councilmember Matt Benjamin said the Council was doing its due diligence after receiving emails about Sweeney-Miran. Ultimately, the committee decided to stick with the candidates it selected, he added.

"When there's a bunch of information that comes to us, I think it's appropriate for us to double-check if this information is known to the selection committee and, if so, we can move on," Benjamin said. "If not, it might be appropriate for them to modify their recommendation."

During the December council meeting, several members of the public spoke against the committee's decision to add Sweeney-Miran to the panel.

"I am part of a parent group advocating for the safety of all children in our community," said Jennifer Rhodes during open comments at the Dec. 15 meeting. "Our group of parents believe that Lisa Sweeney-Miran is unfit to serve in a position on the Police Oversight Panel as she is both biased and has a clear conflict of interest — both violations of the city ordinance outlining rules for the panel. It is irrelevant that her name was recently removed from the lawsuit as a bargaining chip to get on the panel."

The lawsuit Rhodes referenced was filed in May by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado against the city and Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold for the city's ban on camping and tents in public spaces.

Ahead of the Dec. 15 council meeting, Sweeney-Miran emailed City Council saying, "after much consideration, I have decided that immediately upon my appointment by Boulder City Council to the Police Oversight Panel, I will instruct my lawyer to withdraw me as a plaintiff in the above-referenced suit."

Questions of bias

Others have expressed concerns about Sweeney-Miran's pending role on the panel. An email thread between members of the Boulder Police Foundation and Leslie Chandler, owner of FLOW Redesigned in Boulder, had Sweeney-Miran's name in the subject line. In the email, Leslie Chandler urged foundation members to reach out to councilmembers and Herold to prevent Sweeney-Miran from being appointed to the panel. Russ Chandler, Leslie Chandler's husband, is a member of the police foundation.

"Actions of this committee have already had a negative impact on police morale and momentum," Leslie Chandler wrote in the email. "The appointment of Lisa Sweeney-Miran to the POP would likely lead to (further) breakdown in our criminal justice system here in Boulder."

When asked about her email to the police foundation, Leslie Chandler said, "my concerns stated in this communication stem from Lisa Sweeney-Miran's publicly harsh anti-police stance, as well as the clear conflict of interest with the lawsuit she is part of against the city of Boulder and Police Chief Herold. I don't see how having anyone with extreme negative bias toward police would be appropriate on the Police Oversight Panel or beneficial to our community. In fact, it would likely lead to an attrition of some of the best officers, resulting in poorer quality policing and reduced public safety."

Sweeney-Miran, who also serves as the executive director of Mother House, an organization that supports mothers experiencing homelessness, said she is not biased against law enforcement.

"I think there is a big difference between concern and bias, and if what we are suggesting is that anyone who has ever had an experience, anybody who has ever had an interaction that thinks policing needs reformation work is unqualified to serve on the oversight panel, then that pretty much rules out anybody who can serve on the oversight panel," she said.

Sweeney-Miran said the disparate treatment she has witnessed her clients receive from law enforcement compared to how others in the community are treated is one of the reasons she applied to be on the panel.

"I think we know that there are good police officers and there are good laws, and we also know that there are times where police officers do something that they shouldn't be doing, and that's the entire reason the oversight panel was established," Sweeney-Miran said. "I think that's the concern — how do you make sure that if a person of color has an interaction with the police, how do we make sure those interactions are equal and the same for everybody?"

Candidates for future police oversight

The other panelists selected include Danielle Aguilar, a University of Colorado Boulder Ph.D. student; Soledad Diaz, a shelter program director for Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence; Madelyn Strong Woodley, who served on the panel's task force; Sam Zhang, a Ph.D. student at CU Boulder; and Mylene Vialard, a member of the Boulder chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice.

Candidate Talithia Cason withdrew from the panel last week, Boulder Equity Manager Aimee Kane wrote in an email. Her position was replaced by Vialard, who was previously selected as an alternate. Cason did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

Alternates include Kristen Drybread, a faculty member in CU Boulder's anthropology department; Lizzie Friend, former director of performance management and strategy for the Denver Sheriff Department; Jason Savela, a Boulder criminal defense lawyer; and Arlette "AB" Barlow, a transformation coach. Barlow was announced as an alternate Friday afternoon.

Aguilar declined to comment ahead of Thursday's City Council meeting.

Diaz said she was at a meeting for the Downtown Boulder Partnership's Community Advisory Board when she learned her Boulder Police Oversight Panel recommendation while listening to a presentation by Kane.

"I thought that was something I could really contribute to and bring a perspective of a Latina immigrant," Diaz said. "Thinking about police interaction is a bittersweet conversation."

If the City Council at its next meeting signs off on the candidates, Diaz said she hopes to help the panel strengthen its trust with the community.

"I think that is something I would love to work on because I have a legal background of making both people and procedures work together," she said.

Several years after Strong Woodley served on the committee tasked with writing the ordinance for the oversight panel and selecting the original panelists, she has decided to help again as a panelist herself.

"I am always looking for ways of making things better," Strong Woodley said. "I would like to initiate calls to action. One primary call to action I would like to see is to open up your mind and your heart to see that there is quality and value and know that once you embrace those differences that's when change can really happen."

In recent months, panelists and officials with the NAACP Boulder County branch have expressed frustrations with the limitations of the ordinance. Strong Woodley said she will be able to bring insight to the panel and explain the ordinance's original intent and how it can move forward.

"We may not have gotten it perfectly right," she said. "Anytime there is an opportunity for change there is an opportunity for growth."

Zhang, a member of the United Campus Workers Colorado Chapter 7799, said he applied for the panel because he believes it's important for the local chapter to have a voice when it comes to local police oversight.

"To me, policing and labor are deeply interrelated issues," he said.

Zhang said he previously ran a meetup group in Boulder called Data for Democracy, which looked at topics such as policing in schools. He hopes to bring his background in data science to the board.

"What I thought I could bring to the oversight panel, in particular, is a research background and quantitative skill set," he said. "I'm very interested in what we can put out communication-wise to the community and analyze the bias and other kinds of patterns and how policing has been deployed in the city."

Vialard said she wants to join the oversight panel because it aligns with personal work on anti-racism and her role with the Boulder chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice.

"For me, I am not shying away from any hard conversations," she said. "That will always be the perspective I (have). I think there is really a need to rethink what accountability means for police."

Police Oversight Panel alternates Drybread and Savela did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

During her time working with the Denver Sheriff Department, Friend said she learned a lot about the challenges law enforcement faces as well as the need for reform.

"I don't have a background in law enforcement," she said. "I was the director of strategy because I wanted to try to be a part of the solution. I wanted to bring an outside perspective into the department and see what I could do to bring about change from the inside out."

Now that she has left that role, Friend, a Boulder resident, wants to use her experience to impact her community.

"There is no excuse for acts of violence against the community, but I think if we're going to fix some of these long-standing, deep-rooted issues, we need to tackle the problem with empathy and understanding of humanity on both sides," Friend said.