Inspired by an uninspiring meeting

10 a.m. Second Wednesday of the month. That’s when the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the New York city agency that investigates allegations of police misconduct, meets to discuss ongoing issues with the public. Although the organization itself is not directly related to my research, my expectations of heated discussions between police critics and police defenders lured me to drop by, as heated discussions is what my dissertation is all about.

I was early, but not the first: an eccentric looking tall African American man, with a white helmet covering his braided hair, was eagerly waiting in the back row. His posture, his eagerness, and frankly his helmet had ‘a good story’ written all over it, and I was wondering what it was about. His appearance was a sharp contrast to the dry minutes I was flipping through concerning the statistics of the past years. Case 200812650: ‘Frisk, stop’. Case 200816329: ‘Stopped’. I raised my eyebrow though at Case 200816688 ‘Other blunt instrument as a club’. Now that must have been ‘a story’ too. What is blunt yet not a club - I wondered. On paper, though, it was merely a case.

The meeting started, yet stopped shortly after. It consisted of a monotonous citation of the July statistics and a short speech of the chairman who repeated at least five times, in different formal sentence constructions, that ‘we do what we are authorized to do’, ‘we only follow our mandate’ and oh, yes, ‘we reject all criticism’. These toothless remarks inspired me to think further. Why no discussion? Why reject all criticism, and not just some? Why not say why you reject it? Why no emotion? Why no stories? Why so defensive? As a communications advisor, this just boggles me. But my hopes were still up – the helmet guy was still around, who now not only formed a sharp contrast to the stats I was reading, but also to the slick looking people in business suits.

‘Any questions?’, the chairman asked. I instinctively looked to the back row, but he was already standing in the middle of the room. ‘I would like to talk about my case...’. Chairman: ‘No, we can’t do it here’. ‘But I was told I could speak to you here!’ I could hear the disappointment in his voice. Chairman: ‘Talk to that guy there later. We don’t discuss cases’.

Sorry helmet guy – you are but a case.