Two police oversight panels are now at full strength

Mayor Michelle Wu, joined by members of the Boston City Council and The Office of Police Accountability and Transparency (OPAT), briefed the media on Jan. 28 about continuing efforts and work of OPAT as well as the appointment of new members. Jeremiah Robinson/Mayor’s Office photo

The mayoral appointments announced outside the Boston Police Department’s headquarters in Roxbury last week put two police oversight panels at full strength. The independent groups are the Civilian Review Board and the Internal Affairs Oversight Panel, both within the city’s Office of Police Accountability and Transparency, which is headed up by executive director Stephanie Everett.

The office itself came out of a police reform task force’s recommendations that were issued in 2020. It is tasked with investigating police misconduct and reviewing departmental policies and procedures.

The nine members of the mayor-appointed Civilian Review Board look at complaints against police. The names of three of its members, including Dorchester’s Carrie Mays, were forwarded to Mayor Wu by the City Council. Mays is the board’s youth member and is an organizer with the Center for Teen Empowerment.

Peter Alvarez, a former Boston Public Schools teacher, chairs the board, which also includes Natalie Carithers, a former chief of staff to a Mattapan state lawmaker; Rev. Wayne Daley, director of youth and community services at the Salvation Army; child welfare and juvenile justice advocate Joshua Dankoff; social worker Anne Hernandez; criminal defense attorney Amy McNamee; youth wellness advocate Tara Register; and Chris Sumner, who has worked at community organizations such as Upward Bound the Salvation Army’s Ray & Joan Kroc Center.

Hernandez and Register, along with Mays, were the City Council’s picks for slots on the board.

Mays, a 20-year-old college student, spoke to the Reporter in December, after the council forwarded her name to Wu.

“While I’ve done many dialogs about police misconduct, I’m also a victim,” she said. “The day before my 18th birthday there was an incident where four of five officers held myself, my grandmother, and my mother at gunpoint in a case of mistaken identity in our own driveway. It really shaped my whole trajectory and response on police accountability.”

Noting she is a young Black woman, Mays added, “My peers constantly face police brutality and misconduct daily through hyper-policing and hyper-profiling. We see that a lot and this will be a form of representation and implementation of solutions. It’s really about solutions.”

As for the five-member Internal Affairs Oversight Panel, it’s chaired by Leslie Harris, a retired associate justice sitting in Suffolk Juvenile Court and a former probation officer in Suffolk Superior Court. The other members are Alison Cartwright, a former City Hall attorney and member of the police reform task force; Suffolk University law professor Christina Miller; criminal defense attorney and former Suffolk County prosecutor Julien Mundele; and Jassie-Fredcia Senwah, a victim witness advocate at the Suffolk County DA’s office and organizer providing resources and support to students, women, and children impacted by domestic violence.

The panels are separate from the five-member search committee tasked with finding the next Boston police commissioner. That panel, which hopes to present Wu with a slate of candidates later this year, is chaired by retired Supreme Judicial Court Justice Geraldine Hines.

“With our search for a new Police Commissioner underway and our appointees to the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency boards in place, we are ready to transform the structures of public safety and health to build community in Boston,” Wu said in a statement.


Subscribe to the Dorchester Reporter