South Bend’s All-Male Citizen Review Board

“The Board of Public Safety is one example of a “citizen review board,” and there are many different forms of citizen review board around the country. Among the different models of citizen review board, our version is among the most powerful, since it makes decisions, not just recommendations.”

— Mayor Pete Buttigieg, State of the City Address, 2017.

This characterization of the Board of Public Safety as a “citizen review board” rankled local advocates of community-based policing. The Mayor appoints all members of this Board; the community has no involvement in appointments to it. One South Bend Councilwoman, Regina Williams-Preston, described her feelings about the Mayor’s perspective to the New York Times:

“Citizens had asked for a citizens’ review board, and for him to say now we have one, in fact it’s the same thing we’ve always had, that was really disingenuous,” Ms. Williams-Preston said. “Just because you say that doesn’t make it so. To me it was a betrayal.”

Ms. Williams-Preston had co-authored an op-ed some years earlier about the need for a citizen review board, following several cases of police misconduct, including the infamous case of a young African-American teen who had his home entered without permission, and was beaten and Tasered in his bed by South Bend police officers, only to have it discovered later that police had confused him with someone else.

Mayor Buttigieg offered this teen a $15,000 settlement, which his family rejected. The case went to court, and the jury found that this teenager’s civil rights had been repeatedly violated. The case received wide attention as the jury awarded him only $18 in damages, and South Bend police officers then sought to receive legal fees and reimbursement of nearly $1,500 from the family. Ms. William-Preston recounts in her op-ed how the Mayor refused requests for a citizen review board following these cases, and even refused to meet with her about it, though she sat on the City Council.

What has yet to be reported in the past few years is the conduct of the Board of Public Safety regarding workplace justice for women.

The Board of Public Safety has five voting members, all appointed by the mayor. According to the minutes of the Board of Public Safety, since March 18, 2015, there has not been a woman appointed to this Board. For the majority of Mayor Buttigieg’s first term, from 2012–2015, the Board was 80% male and 20% female. In his second term, from 2016–2019, the Board was 100% male. This is despite Mayor Buttigieg’s claim in his 2015 State of the City address, that his administration had “moved intentionally to ensure that our many boards and commissions are made even more diverse than I found them, with more female and more ethnic minority appointees to key boards”.

The all-male Board of Public Safety faced a major test in late 2017. The South Bend Police Department was found by a federal jury on November 2nd, 2017 to have unlawfully retaliated against Joy Phillips, a South Bend Police Officer. Earlier, Officer Phillips had filed a sexual harassment claim against a male supervisor. She later filed a lawsuit related to this claim.

Officer Phillips was subjected to a bevy of disciplinary charges by her superiors. For example, in months following her lawsuit, Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski placed her on administrative leave and recommended her for nearly two months’ of unpaid suspension. Officer Phillips described the humiliation of how Chief Ruszkowski “stripped her of her police powers” in March 2016, and that she even had to find her own way home when her squad car was rescinded. Officer Phillips left the SBPD and joined the City of Elkhart Police. In addition to the grand jury’s finding of unlawful retaliation, she was awarded $80,000 in damages.

“I want to be sure residents understand how discipline is handled. The final decisions around major cases of officer discipline are made by a panel of five appointed citizens”. — Mayor Pete Buttigieg, State of the City Address, 2017

The minutes of the Board of Public Safety in the months following November 2nd, 2017 do not record any discussion or action taken in discipline of Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski. Nor did Mayor Buttigieg comment on the federal jury’s findings.

This represents a distinctive disciplinary approach to South Bend’s Police leadership under Mayor Buttigieg. With his first head of police, Mayor Buttigieg demoted Darryl Boykins, South Bend’s first African-American Police Chief, following a FBI investigation of wire-tapping in the SBPD. The FBI did not file charges against Boykins, and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana found that “no federal prosecution was warranted”.

Mayor Buttigieg’s second head of police, Police Chief Ron Teachman, was investigated for allegedly failing to support a fellow officer who intervened in a violent confrontation. The Indiana State Police provided an independent investigation of this allegation at the request of the South Bend City Council and the Board of Public Safety. That investigation report was shared with members of the Board of Public Safety and the Mayor, and kept confidential.

When Mayor Buttigieg informed the Board of Public Safety that he would not discipline Chief Teachman, Patrick Cottrell, the chair of the Board of Public Safety, immediately resigned. In a public letter of resignation, Cottrell informed Mayor Buttigieg that he had “lost respect for him as mayor” and could “no longer serve on a board appointed by him.” In Cottrell’s view, the Police Chief “should be held accountable to a standard higher then [sic] the subordinate officers… and that’s not the case with Chief Teachman.” Cottrell called on Mayor Buttigieg to publicize aspects of the report, which Mayor Buttigieg refused to do. The officer that Chief Teachman allegedly failed to support also criticized the Mayor for not disciplining Chief Teachman or making details of the report public.

Notably, during the Boykins investigation, Mayor Buttigieg said this about his decision to demote Chief Boykins:

“if you make mistakes serious enough to bring on a federal investigation into your department, you cannot keep a leadership post in this administration.”

Yet when a federal jury judged the South Bend Police Department’s actions against Officer Joy Phillips to be unlawful retaliation, there was no disciplinary action taken against Chief Ruszkowski by the all-male Board of Public Safety or by Mayor Buttigieg. Similarly, when a state agency investigated Chief Teachman at the request of the South Bend City Council and the Board of Public Safety, there was no disciplinary action taken by the Mayor, despite the strong recommendation of disciplinary action by the Chair of the Board of Public Safety. Yet Chief Boykins had his resignation demanded by Mayor Buttigieg, and was demoted in rank, due to an investigation which concluded with no charges or recommendation of discipline.

Mayor Buttigieg has described the Board of Public Safety as a “citizens’ review board” and a powerful one at that. Yet regarding South Bend Police leadership’s unlawful retaliation against a female officer who alleged sexual harassment, the all-male Board he appointed did not use its disciplinary power. Both the Board of Public Safety and Mayor Buttigieg were non-responsive to this transgression by police leadership of the law, in contrast to past precedent announced and enacted by the Mayor. In this case, South Bend lost a substantial sum in legal costs. And most importantly, the city lost a well-qualified and experienced female officer from a police force in obvious need of diversity in leadership and in public safety review.