CMPD created new citizen committee after viral arrest. Why will its meetings be private?

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department representatives will meet in private with community leaders to discuss whether and how CMPD should change an unspecified range of policies.

Those meetings — born from a forceful arrest that went viral — will be private because it’s an “informal” group that’s not subject to the state’s open meetings law, the city’s attorney said. For the last month, The Charlotte Observer has pushed for the discussions to be public, citing state open meetings law.

It’s unclear whether CMPD’s decision to keep the meetings behind closed doors is in defiance of the law, one expert said. But for the sake of good government, decisions about how police operate should be for the people’s eyes, said Brooks Fuller, an assistant professor at Elon University and the director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition.

Meetings come after Steele Creek bus stop arrest

The meetings, announced by Police Chief Johnny Jennings on Nov. 28, come after Police Officer Vincent Pistone was caught on video striking Christina Pierre 17 times. The controversial arrest, captured by a bystander and shared widely on social media, happened on Nov. 13.

It was 14 strikes too many, Jennings said last month. The chief wrote in The Observer about the arrest and the anger it garnered — simultaneously acknowledging footage of Pierre’s arrest was “not easy to watch” and defending his officers.

CMPD suspended Pistone for 40 hours.

But community leaders in Charlotte, especially in Charlotte’s Black community, still have concerns that could be addressed in the meetings.

“We have a goal of having constructive conversations regarding policies that include Response to Resistance, police-citizen encounters and more,” Jennings said in a news release that announced the group’s formation.

It’s not clear when the meetings will begin. The city and CMPD didn’t provide the first meeting date to The Observer, and a community member who will be part of the discussions said she has received no email invitation.

The group is slated to make policy recommendations in June, CMPD spokesperson Mike Allinger said. Its members include representatives from:

• Charlotte-Mecklenburg Community Relations

• The Citizens Review Board

• The NAACP

• Action NC

• The Latin American Coalition

• Clergy

• CMPD

• George Floyd Global Memorial

Push for open meetings

Observer Managing Editor Taylor Batten urged Jennings and other city leaders to reconsider the meetings’ closed-door status in a Dec. 4 letter.

“The group’s work is of significant public importance, and members of the public will naturally take great interest in its deliberations and ultimate recommendations, which will affect them directly,” wrote Batten, who is also on the N.C. Open Government Coalition’s board.

The CMPD group is a public body, he argued.

North Carolina law gives a wide definition for a public body: any “elected or appointed authority, board, commission, committee, council, or other body of the State, or of one or more counties, cities, school administrative units, constituent institutions of The University of North Carolina, or other political subdivisions or public corporations in the State that (i) is composed of two or more members and (ii) exercises or is authorized to exercise a legislative, policy-making, quasi-judicial, administrative, or advisory function.”

Jennings did not respond to the letter. But he said during a Dec. 12 press conference that the discussions will be private so they can be “open and free.”

“I don’t want people concerned with what’s going to be publicized — comments that they might make and things that they may see,” Jennings said.

The meetings’ “outcome” will be shared with the public, he added.

While Jennings’ concerns about his group speaking freely are understandable, they don’t outweigh the public’s right to know, Fuller said.

“There’s no other public official or public employee in the state of North Carolina who has the ability to use state-sanctioned force,” Fuller said. “I think we need to keep that squarely in mind. This is where conversations need to be happening in public view and policy needs to be made in public view.”

City says group is ‘informal’

The city has said that the group does not meet the definition of a public body.

“In short, it is the City’s position that this is an informal collaborative group selected by Chief Jennings not pursuant to any specific legislative authorization or direction to do so,” City Attorney Patrick Baker said in a Jan. 2 email.

The group’s members were not elected or appointed by a legislative body, and they did not come together because of the City Council, Baker wrote.

The Observer’s attorney, Jonathan Buchan, has twice asked Charlotte officials to reconsider.

Open meetings statute makes no exception for “informal groups,” Buchan wrote in an email Thursday, among other arguments.

“The issues to be discussed by this group of citizens and police officials are of critical importance to this community, and this open discussion will certainly be enlightening to the public,” Buchan wrote.

City’s claim has parallels

The city’s claim that its group is “informal” echoes some recent history.

In 2021, Lt. Gov Mark Robinson established a task force to review complaints from within North Carolina’s schools.

“Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson is seeking to provide support for parents, teachers, and most importantly, students who are willing to stand up for North Carolina’s future by exposing indoctrination in the classroom and ensuring that our students are taught how to think - not what to think,” a news release from his office said.

Robinson, a Republican, now is running for governor. He is also on the state’s Board of Education.

His task force did not alert the public to its first meeting within 48 hours. Nor did it leave a record of who met and what they did, The Assembly reported.

“Frankly, we’re talking about a group of individuals meeting informally with staff around our conference table,” the lieutenant governor’s general counsel, Brian LiVecchi, told The Assembly.

Legal gray area

North Carolina’s open meetings law is purposely broad, said Fuller, the director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition.

The state’s courts have long said the open meetings laws and public records laws that hold government officials accountable and create transparency should be interpreted liberally, he added. Exceptions to those laws are supposed to be interpreted “very narrowly.”

“We start from the position that if there’s a group doing public business, they’re a public body unless you can prove otherwise,” he said.

There is often a gray area when elected and appointed officials establish task forces and advisory groups, though, he said.

One key factor: if the City Council has given even tacit sanction for Jennings to appoint people for recommendations, his group looks more like a public body. And even if the group isn’t a public body, its records will be as soon as they land in the hands of city officials.