Lawmakers vote to disband state community oversight boards in contentious vote

State lawmakers voted Thursday to disband civilian Community Oversight Boards that act as watchdogs on police departments in Tennessee.

With a final vote of 67-19, Makayla McCree, a Metro COB member, said it was heartbreaking, but expected as she has been preparing herself for the vote months in advance.

McCree, who has been a Metro COB board member since 2021, said the vote was not bipartisan.

"We are living in a state of absolute tyranny," McCree said.

Debate on House floor

The board is comprised of 11 people, all approved by council members.

"The urban centers do not want this bill," Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis, said before the vote. "These bills really absolutely have nothing to do with the place you're from."

The bill's sponsor, Elaine Davis, R-Knoxville, said the bill would allow local governing bodies to create oversight boards.

Discussion of the bill grew contentious as Reps. Sam McKenzie, Justin Jones and Parkinson spoke out against the legislation, drawing the ire of some in the gallery.

"There's a reason they were initiated," Rep. Sam McKenzie, D-Knoxville said. "This bill is bad, it guts the process, it de-fangs whatever ability they had. This doesn't help the men and women in blue."

Amid debate on the bill, a woman in the gallery shouted out in opposition to the bill.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, said it was her second outburst and asked troopers to remove her from the gallery.

The woman willingly left the gallery, but troopers began telling her she had to leave the Capitol building altogether, which Sexton had not publicly requested. She was later handcuffed and carried into a nearby elevator.

"This is a bad bill," said the woman, whose identity has not yet been confirmed by the Tennessean. "The people of Nashville had voted for a community oversight board. They voted to have the board to investigate and to be selected by the people This bill takes that away."

Metro Nashville's COB operates under a budget of $2,171,900, according to its fiscal year 2023 budget.

As lawmakers debated multiple amendments, Jones, D-Nashville, said the bill proposed to strip powers from Community Oversight Boards in Tennessee was "undoing democracy."

In the end, with a majority, Republicans passed the bill.

But McCree tried to keep her faith, hoping that following the police brutality case involving the death of Tyre Nichols would inspired a renewed faith in COBs.

Instead, she said, the legislation to disband oversight boards was introduced the same day.

Uncertain future

Now, McCree said there is an uncertain future for oversight boards in Tennessee.

She told The Tennessean the board will discuss its future at Monday's regularly scheduled meeting, from 4-6 p.m. at Madison Branch Library, 610 Gallatin Pike S.

The 2023 COB budget is up from 2022 when total expenditures reached $1,565,800.

In Nov. 2018, Davidson County residents passed an amendment to create a Community Oversight Board by a 59% to 41% margin — 134,135 to 94,055.

The amendment was inspired in part due to shootings that occurred involving two black men by white officers. The amendment gave the COB investigative and compulsory powers to review arrests and police actions from public complaints.

Community Oversight Now organized after a white Metro police officer in February 2017 shot and killed Jocques Clemmons, a 30-year-old black man, after a traffic stop at the James A. Cayce Homes public housing in East Nashville.

Reach reporter Craig Shoup by email at cshoup@gannett.com and on Twitter @Craig_Shoup. To support his work, sign up for a digital subscription to www.tennessean.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Lawmakers vote to disband community oversight board powers