The Oklahoma City Council voted Tuesday, August 1, to establish a Community Public Safety Advisory Board to serve as a permanent and independent resident advisory group in Oklahoma City that will review the complaint investigative process and results of completed complaint investigations involving Oklahoma City Police officers.
The creation of the board is considered a best practice in the areas of public safety accountability and resident engagement. The board will be comprised of nine voting members, eight of whom will be nominated by a councilperson from each respective ward and one at-large member appointed by Mayor David Holt who will serve as Chair. The board will conduct business in open meetings.
The Community Public Safety Advisory Board will build on the work of the former Citizens Advisory Board, which was dissolved in May 2023. The need to transform the board was one of 39 recommendations included in the report received by the City Council in March 2022 to evaluate law enforcement policies and practices.
The primary mission of the Community Public Safety Advisory Board will be to establish and maintain a partnership with Oklahoma City residents by enhancing community trust and confidence through transparency, education, and communication.
“The former advisory board was created two decades ago and at the time was a credible reform, but as the years advanced, its design began to fall short of the community’s needs,” Mayor Holt said. “It became apparent in 2020 and beyond that our city needs a board that structurally ties back to the residents. That means a board that is appointed and confirmed by the people’s elected representatives, which is not how the former board was designed. In so many of our city’s core functions, we have boards of volunteer residents who serve as a bridge between the government function and the people we serve. Advisory boards composed of citizens have proven immensely effective in the implementation of MAPS and other important initiatives. Certainly, something as important as public safety deserves to also benefit from our most effective models. I commend the Council for adopting this reform, and I commend all involved for continuing to keep the promises made in 2020 that we would collectively work to improve the city’s critical law enforcement function.”
Meetings
The board will meet monthly, and meetings are subject to Oklahoma’s Open Records Act and Open Meeting Act.
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Media Contact:
Andrea Grayson
(405) 297-2802
andrea.grayson@okc.gov