New Castle County Council overwhelmingly approved an ordinance Tuesday revising the Police Accountability Board’s duties and operations.
With the new changes, the County Executive will appoint the chairperson, which was previously elected by the Boardmembers. The Boardmembers will now elect the vice chairperson from among themselves.
Councilmember Brandon Toole is one of the ordinance’s sponsors. He said the changes came from the County Executive’s office and have been approved by the Police Accountability Board leadership and members.
“During the Public Safety Committee, this is what came out of it,” Toole said. “So, we worked with the administration just to identify the code. So we're not changing the code. We just strengthen the language of when the annual report is due for this floor amendment number one.”
The Board is responsible for publishing an annual report with recommendations for county public safety officials.
The report did not previously have a deadline assigned to it. County Councilmember Kevin Caneco said Board members and leadership support an April 1 deadline.
“Now we can have kind of a, to use my old terminology, a battle rhythm each year on what date we expect the report to be submitted,” Caneco said. “So kind of just tightens up the language, cleans it up a little and gives us a hard date of when we can expect the Police Accountability's annual report and nothing else changes.”
Changes in the ordinance also include allowing the County Executive to appoint the board’s chairperson. The chair was previously elected by the board members. The Boardmembers will now elect the vice chairperson from among themselves.
The ordinance passed 12-1, with Councilmember Jae Street casting the sole ‘no’ vote.
Street said he would have supported a change initiated by the Board but felt this was led by his colleagues.
“Either the County Executive and Council are going to be in charge of the Police Accountability Board or the Police Accountability Board is going to be in charge,” Street said. “It can't be both, so y'all do what you want to do. I'll take my 12 to one defeat, but it's nothing new about that.”
The changes also lower the required number of annual meetings from 10 to six and removes some specifications for members’ specialties.
Caneco said those changes were made as a result of conversations with Boardmembers, who are volunteering their time and said they sometimes struggled to meet the 10-meeting minimum.
