Fort Worth may consider police oversight board soon, but leaders disagree on key details

A recommendation to form a civilian board to provide oversight of the Fort Worth Police Department is expected to be made to the city council this summer but the final outcome will be a matter of debate, as some city council members differ on the need, function and authority of such a board.

The Office of the Police Monitor’s Mutual Accountability Working Group has been meeting for more than six months to prepare a recommendation for the formation of a panel of trained civilians to monitor issues in the police department.

Based on interviews conducted by the Star-Telegram, there will be disagreement among some council members about how the board will operate, whether it will have subpoena power or even whether the board should exist. The working group itself was to have a recommendation after three months, with a final recommendation expected last spring, but the group needed more time to reach a consensus, the city said in a prepared statement.

Although the city would not release details about the expected recommendation, Michelle Gutt, the city’s director of communications and public engagement, said in a prepared statement that it would likely be ready this summer.

Oversight History

Calls for an oversight board have been circulating since 2016, when a viral video of the arrest of Jacqueline Craig sparked outrage. Craig had called police after a neighbor assaulted her 7-year-old son, but she and her two teenage daughters were arrested instead. The arrest was the impetus for the formation of the Race and Culture Task Force, a group in charge of investigating racial inequities in Fort Worth and making recommendations to the city.

The Task Force recommended in 2018 that the city adopt some form of civilian oversight of the police department.

In February 2020, the Office of the Police Oversight Monitor was established, and a month later Kim Neal was hired as the city’s first police monitor.

Neal serves as an impartial overseer of the police department as she reviews its policies and procedures, manages complaints and makes recommendations for improvement. Among other duties, her office is entrusted with figuring out how to implement a civilian oversight board.

Neal declined the Star-Telegram’s request for an interview for this story. She told the Star-Telegram last August that community members should be patient as the office forms a review board.

Police officers don’t have high expectations over the idea of an oversight board, according to a survey conducted by the Police Oversight Monitor’s office. More than 80 percent of officers who responded said community oversight would improve community policing “a little” or “not at all.”

Chief of Police Neil Noakes expressed a similar belief. He told WFAA in an interview this month, while looking at other oversight models across the country, “I’ll be quite honest, I haven’t seen a lot that had a lot of positive results.”

But he’s also expressed a willingness to collaborate with the Police Oversight Monitor’s office in the process of forming a board.

“It’s coming whether we want to see it or not,” Noakes said in a January news conference. “My plan is to be a part of the process.”

More than half of respondents to the Police Oversight Monitor’s Community Perception Survey said they wanted to see a community oversight board, which encouraged the office to continue its pursuit of such a board, the city said in a statement. Almost 4,000 Fort Worth community members responded to the survey. The respondents represented about 0.5 percent of the city’s population.

While it’s been more than a year since the Police Oversight Monitor’s office was established, former Race and Culture Task Force co-chairman Bob Ray Sanders said he doesn’t feel like progress has stalled on a oversight board’s implementation.

What oversight could look like in Fort Worth

From speaking with Neal, “I sensed ... that she was taking her job seriously: deliberating, gathering information. [And] at the same time dealing with some issues within the department,” Sanders said.

The office has taken steps to involve community perspectives in the process, one of the most notable being the establishment of the working group in December 2020. It’s made up of representatives from 13 organizations, including the NAACP, LULAC, the Tarrant County Coalition for Community Oversight and the Fort Worth Police Department.

The group has been sorting out how oversight board members would be selected, what the board should be called and how members should be trained, among other considerations.

The Task Force’s 2018 recommendation suggested that the board have 11 members whose powers “may include an independent investigative component.”

But the nature of the investigative component will be a matter of debate. A key question will be whether the board will have subpoena power, or the power to compel witnesses to testify in department investigations.

District 4 City Council representative Cary Moon said he wouldn’t support a civilian oversight board with subpoena power, but District 8 representative Chris Nettles said a board without it would be “pointless.”

“We realized that was one of the things that was going to be objected to the most by the City Council as well as people within the police department, so we didn’t specifically call for a review committee with subpoena power,” Sanders said.

Although subpoena power would be ideal, it wouldn’t be necessary for the board to do its job, Sanders said. The National Association for Community Oversight of Law Enforcement also said effective oversight doesn’t necessarily require the power, according to its website.

The police monitor doesn’t have subpoena power, but she is able to review Fort Worth police policies and procedures, serve on use of force review boards and make recommendations for change.

Even without an oversight board, Fort Worth’s oversight system ranked well when compared to other Texas cities’ systems in a report by Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. It followed the National Association for Community Oversight of Law Enforcement’s guidelines for effective oversight that include categories such as access to data, community outreach, transparency and independence and measured how well each city adhered to them. Fort Worth measured favorably in all categories, with some room for improvement.

Council members have varying opinions

Moon argued that the city doesn’t need a new oversight board.

“I believe right now we have civilian oversight in that we have ... nine duly elected members of mayor and council that provide oversight,” he said.

Moon cited the council’s recent actions such as banning chokeholds, adding crisis intervention teams and establishing diversity recruitment programs as examples of the council fulfilling its oversight role.

“That model has worked well in that we’ve been able to get a lot of things done that other cities have not been able to get done,” Moon said.

But Margo Frasier, vice president of the National Association for Community Oversight of Law Enforcement board and former Austin police monitor, said the most effective oversight board is impartial and made up of members who aren’t swayed by politics.

Council members “are, by nature, somewhat political creatures,” Frasier said.

The Fort Worth Police Officers’ Association and its PAC were active in the most recent city election with endorsements, campaign donations and mailers in support of candidates. The association endorsed Mayor Mattie Parker and current council members Moon, Carlos Flores, Michael Crain, Gyna Bivens and Leonard Firestone.

Parker, Flores, and Crain said they were waiting to see the working group’s recommendation before offering their opinions on an oversight board. After several attempts, Firestone and Bivens did not provide a comment for this story.

When asked if the board should have subpoena power, Crain said “any system that’s put in place shouldn’t undermine the ability for the [police] monitor to work directly with the police chief.” From his conversations with Neal, Crain said she seems to have a good working relationship with Noakes.

Nettles said an independent oversight board is crucial.

“Kim Neal is employed by the City of Fort Worth and you are not ... going to get the community to buy into that she’s a trusted voice, even though she may be,” he said. “But anybody that’s employed by the city, the community is going to feel that they’re going to be partial to the city and not the community.”

A civilian oversight board would help to improve trust between the community and Fort Worth police, Nettles said.

District 6 City Councilman Jared Williams wouldn’t say how he would vote on a recommendation for an oversight board, but he emphasized the importance of oversight in a prepared statement.

It’s an “important mechanism for ensuring we have a high functioning government while providing a space for our neighbors to fully participate in government,” Williams said. “It also ensures safe and strong neighborhoods which is a key value for our neighbors as we move towards unifying our City.”

District 9 City Councilwoman Elizabeth Beck said implementing an oversight board will benefit people who have difficult relationships with police.

“It gives people who need to be at the table a seat at the table, and in a way that they move towards a feeling of holding people accountable and feeling safer in their own communities,” she said.

Beck said she hopes to see a well-researched recommendation this summer with details of how each member of a civilian oversight board would be selected and trained.