The Alexandria City Council disapproved a plan to reconfigure the city’s Independent Community Policing Review Board (ICPRB).
On Saturday, Council unanimously reversed a November 2024 decision that would have dramatically altered the rules and authority of the board and eliminated its subpoena power. The decision was made after considerable pushback during the public hearing, including from the ICPRB chair and vice chair, who are unhappy with the proposal.
Council instead voted for creation of a subcommittee with two Council members, two ICPRB members, the independent police auditor and the Alexandria Police Department to iron out these and other issues by this spring.
The subcommittee members will be announced at Council’s meeting on Tuesday night (Jan. 28).
It’s been nearly four years since Council established the ICPRB to investigate allegations of police misconduct. The eight-member Board was formed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, an event prompting city leaders to call for police accountability. But the Board, whose members have three-year terms, hasn’t functioned for numerous reasons, including failing to make a quorum eight times at monthly meetings and not establishing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Alexandria Police Department.
To contend with the impasse, the ICPRB created an ad-hoc committee, which met from July to October 2024. That committee was made up of the independent auditor, two ICPRB members, APD representatives, and representatives from the city attorney and city manager’s office. The committee developed a compromise proposal where APD would provide unfettered access to the independent auditor to investigate allegations of police misconduct, but without subpoena power. The proposal also included a provision that a quorum could be met with four voting members instead of five, and it was approved on first reading by City Council 6-1 on condition that the subpoena power issue be revisited in January.
“The complication that this subpoena power can create, it’s not overcommable,” Vice Mayor Sarah Bagley said. “But I wanted to go back over that for the community that at that point, the city and the auditor will essentially be on opposite sides of a hearing before the circuit court.”
Interim auditor Ameratu Kamara said in a presentation that the Board’s support for investigatory powers has both legal and procedural drawbacks.
“Under the current proposal approved by Council on November 12th, the Board cannot receive complaints and initiate formal investigations,” Kamara wrote. “Instead, the approved revisions allow the ICPRB to receive inquiries and forward them to AIPA (Alexandria Independent Policing Auditor) or the Alexandria Police Department to initiate an investigation. This change is in line with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which applies to AIPA and APD but not the Board. If the Board were to receive complaints and initiate investigations directly, it may not be able to redact and protect private information in the event of a FOIA request.”
Both ICPRB Chair Chris Lewis and Vice Chair Alexis Stackhouse want subpoena power.
“The current ordinance contains subpoena power, and it was removed in this revised proposal,” Lewis said. “Subpoena power ensures the independence and thoroughness of investigations. The power of the police chief to compel answers from APD employees or provide other evidence is not sufficient in the unfortunate scenario of delay, refusal or other efforts by a chief not to comply with an investigation.”
Stackhouse said that the ICPRB’s power and authority was taken under the nose of its board members, and that the shift moved the ICPRB from an investigative model to a more “power-based auditor model.”
“I consider it to be something kind of like quiet quitting, where little changes were being made, and as a board we might have been going along with them, because we were seeing them one at a time,” Stackhouse told Council. “We had gotten to a point where there was a thousand cuts, and we realized we were bleeding to death our authority. We were giving up subpoena power, we were giving up the ability to direct the auditor to do the things that it was your intention for us to be able to do.”
APD doesn’t want the ICPRB to have subpoena power, and the interim independent auditor doesn’t think it’s necessary to conduct investigations.
“The Office of independent auditor has full access,” Assistant Police Chief Raul Pedroso said. “There are no closed doors, restricted videos they can see and watch whatever we do and how we do it.”
Pedroso continued, “These are very critical investigations and things that we’re talking about, and we’re talking about police officers that serve the city and that have the right to a timely process and to have all the rights that they’re afforded to. The more people that we bring into the process of investigating and asking questions and bringing people before all these different processes, it’s not going to make things more timely. It’s going to potentially delay things and create encumbrances to really getting to the facts of what happened, assessing it, evaluating it, and making the decisions.”
Damon Minnix, president of Alexandria chapter of the Southern States Police Benevolent Association, said that the city doesn’t need “unnecessary subpoenas.”
“We are in favor of maintaining an increasing trust between and among the police department, city council, city manager and the public,” Minnix said. “The ordinance does this by allowing the chief of police to compel the Alexandria Police Department employees investigations conducted by the Alexandria independent policing auditor and answer truthfully and completely all questions directed to them by police auditor investigators. By the chief compelling rather than an independent subpoena, officers are afforded certain parity protections. The ordinance will increase the trust between the public and the police department, by giving the public assurance a full cooperation, officers involved in investigations.”
Former City Council Member Mo Seifeldein wrote the legislation creating the ICPRB, and said the ordinance explicity provides the ICPRB with investigative and subpoena powers.
“Removing these powers is not just a bureaucratic adjustment, it is a betrayal of the progress we made as a city to build trust between law enforcement and the community,” Seifeldein said. “Yet we are being told that the ordinance does not specify who investigates or how subpoenas should be handled. This is not a question of interpretation, it is a clear attempt to direct investigations and maintain the status quo, let’s be honest.”
Ingris Moran has been on the ICPRB since its inception, and decried the changes.
“I’ve been waiting anxiously to make a positive difference for my community, and we cannot keep wasting time with more obstacles that will bar us from doing the real work,” Moran said. “We reject any changes that will truly strip the community of the gains it has fought hard for years to secure. Alexandria City is an opportunity to be a model and an example, especially during a time where extreme executive power is becoming the norm, we need the city to maximize its limited resources and ensure we are creating systematic changes for the betterment of our communities of color.”
Council member Canek Aguirre said that he understands there is frustration from ICPRB, from city staff, Council and the community.
“I feel that we are almost there,” Aguirre said. “And even if it takes us four years, five years to get there, I do believe that the Board should be able to, after a majority vote, say that, yes, we do really want (the auditor) to investigate something.”
