Natashia Tidwell, (left) a member of the city’s Community Ombudsman Oversight Panel, spoke during a public meeting on police-community relations held at St. Peter’s Teen Center. Seated at right is Eugene O’Flaherty, the Corporation Counsel for the City of Boston. Eliza Dewey photo

Last Thursday night, community members from the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood gathered at St. Peter’s Teen Center for a meeting with city officials on the appeal process for civilian complaints in cases of alleged police misconduct. The discussion that followed highlighted some of the main areas of disagreement between the majority black and Latino neighborhood and law enforcement officials and provided a public platform for suggestions to improve the Community Ombudsman Oversight Panel, or COOP, which oversees the civilian appeal process.

The event, which featured a three-person panel consisting of Boston Police Superintendent Frank Mancini, chief of the Bureau of Professional Standards; Corporation Counsel Eugene O’Flaherty, the lead attorney for the city; and Natashia Tidwell, the only current COOP member, was the third in a series on community-policy relations organized by Rev. Jefferey Brown of Twelfth Baptist Church in the wake of intensified national discussion about the intersection of race and policing.

Although both audience and panel members repeatedly referenced the need to address community “mistrust” of law enforcement, the question-and-answer portion of the evening revealed sharp disagreement between many community members and Supt. Mancini in particular about the fundamental issue of what fuels that mistrust.

Mancini made clear that he felt racial bias was not a systemic problem within the police department. In response to a question about an October American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report detailing “widespread racially biased ‘stop-and-frisk’ practices” by the BPD, Mancini said there was only a “numerical disparity” in police deployment across various neighborhoods – not any racial “bias.” He would not elaborate on the meaning of that distinction.

Mancini lay much of the responsibility for community mistrust of police with the media, which, he said in response to one woman’s question about officers who violate civilians’ constitutional rights, “will always focus on the bad apple. You have to be careful that you don’t jump to conclusions that everyone is like [an individual police officer].”

That comment did not sit well with several of those in attendance. “In fact, the officers do violate the Constitution,” retorted Aaron Bray, a Harvard Law School student who grew up in the Bowdoin/Geneva neighborhood. “Any young man who grew up in this neighborhood knows that, so don’t give me that line about bad apples.”

Another man reversed Mancini’s term, claiming that police officers “are looking at us as bad apples, and we’re not.”

Tidwell offered a more moderate position, saying that even though certain police tactics are “Constitutionally defensible,” they are “demoralizing to a community” and “create the mistrust.”

Others voiced concerns about logistics with one man asking if the COOP board could have more than three members to avoid future staffing problems. O’Flaherty said that the idea of staggered terms for board members had been floated as a potential solution.

Not everyone in the audience was critical, however. One man said he thought his fellow neighbors could sometimes “be delusional” in their criticisms of police, adding, “we should recognize things that have been beneficial,” such as police attempts to address “high crime” in the area.

Rev. Brown also offered praise for Boston police officers in contrast to those in New York and Ferguson, which he recently visited as a protester. “I think what makes it better here than [those cities] is [here] they really take seriously community policing,” he said in an interview after the event.

“That said,” he added, “it doesn’t mean we won’t have any of those incidents in the future. But, I think that if we do, we will be able to handle them in a different way.”

In keeping with the theme of community engagement, Mancini suggested that civilians proactively engage with police officers. “Get to know the correctional officers in your neighborhood,” he said. “The police officers today are looking for that kind of interaction.” He said that doing so might help civilians avoid potential negative interactions with law enforcement because they would be known to officers. Bray, for one, was unimpressed by the suggestion. “Why is the onus on us?” he asked rhetorically after the meeting.

The COOP process was originally designed by former Mayor Menino in 2007 to provide a mechanism for citizens to appeal the outcomes of internal departmental investigations of alleged officer misconduct. The panel was organized with three members whose terms ran until last summer, at which point two individuals decided against renewing their terms. Tidwell intends to remain on the board, pending mayoral approval of a term extension.

O’Flaherty, who has been asked by Mayor Martin Walsh to oversee the COOP through this transition period, cast last week’s meeting as an opportunity for community members to help determine the COOP’s future. After the event, he said officials are reviewing two finalist candidates, although he was not at liberty to reveal their names. He said he hopes to have both positions filled by the end of January.

During the meeting, Tidwell mentioned how the COOP is different from a civilian review board in that it does not conduct its own investigations; it is limited to reviewing internal police investigations to determine if they were conducted in a “fair and thorough” manner.

She added: “I get the arguments for both [the COOP and a civilian review board], but I don’t see it as an either-or situation.”

According to the latest data available from the COOP’s 2013 annual report, of the 324 complaints brought in 2012 by citizens against police officers, 21 (nine percent) were found by Internal Affairs to be “sustained,” or ruled in the complainant’s favor. The COOP reviewed a total of 23 appeals and found that four of those investigations (18 percent) were “other than fairly and thoroughly conducted.” Tidwell is currently compiling the data for the 2014 annual report.