MANSFIELD — The leader of the Mansfield Chapter of the NAACP said Monday evening he will seek to have the city’s civilian Police Review Commission revamped and strengthened.
Alomar Davenport, elected president of the local civil rights organization in December, said during a “Town Hall” meeting that the board “in its current form has no teeth.”
“We are concerned. We are absolutely concerned,” the former 4th Ward City Council member said, renewing an effort he launched three years ago when he was a local lawmaker.
Davenport said he would ask the local NAACP to spearhead the effort, a citizen initiative petition that would require a sufficient number of signatures on the ballot. He didn’t elaborate during Monday’s meeting on what changes would be sought.
In the push three years ago that never made it to the ballot, one of the biggest changes would have been the creation of an “Inspector General” position, outside of the Mansfield Police Department, that would investigate complaints against officers at the same time the department is investigating them internally.
Davenport made his plans known two hours into the public meeting the NAACP organized at the Legacy Academy of Excellence on Trimble Road, a session that included 19 questions posed to police leaders by organizers, and also a question-and-answer session with those in attendance.
Those questions from organizers covered a wide range of police policies, procedures and department goals, including recruitment of more minority police officers to the department.
The Q&A session included questions from residents, most of whom expressed distrust in the police department, especially patrol officers who interact most with the community. Residents also expressed displeasure at the lack of opportunities for young people in the community to engage in safe activities.
The NAACP organized the meeting after two recent police/community interactions, including the arrest on April 9 of a Black man on a porch outside of a Blymyer Avenue house that included officers tackling the subjet and later using pepper spray when he tried to refuse being placed into a police vehicle.
He put forward the proposal after excusing Safety Service Director Keith Porch, police Chief Jason Bammann and Assistant Chief Mike Napier from the meeting.
Bammann issued a press release Sunday afternoon that said an internal investigation found officers “acted within the policies” of the department when making the arrest, a finding with which Porch concurred.
Bammann said the investigation included a review of the complaint filed by a 28-year-old man who was arrested; security footage posted to Facebook; body-worn camera footage; cruiser video from the involved officers, and officer statements.
The man who filed the complaint has the right to have the case reviewed by the Police Review Commission, officials said, and to tell his side of the story to commission members.
After the trio left, Mayor Jodie Perry was invited to remain during a portion of the meeting that Davenport said was necessary to allow the community to voice additional concerns and proposed solutions.
Davenport said he supports the mayor, who took office in January 2024, but added that “the buck stops with her.”
“This is an opportunity to show she is with us (or not),” Davenport said. “It’s difficult for the police to police themselves.
“We have to figure out a way to be a part of the process. We are not (right now),” he said, adding it didn’t appear to him that officers gave the Blymyer Avenue resident an opportunity to comply with police before he was taken down.
“That is not the kind of policing we want,” Davenport said.
In his press release, Bammann said officers twice instructed the man to come down from the porch and that he refused both times.
Perry didn’t comment on Davenport’s proposal, though the mayor did say she reviews complaints filed against the MPD.
In 2022, Davenport and others involved with the Black & Brown Coalition sought to significantly alter a review board first formed by Mansfield City Council in 2003. That effort, when it began, was under a tight timeline to obtain 1,376 signatures of registered city voters.
That number of signatures represented 10 percent of the total number of City of Mansfield voters who participated in the most recent gubernatorial election.
Under the current structure, the MPD investigates citizen complaints and reports those findings to a seven-member citizen review commission whose members are approved by City Council.
Three members of City Council attended Monday evening’s meeting — Cheryl Meier (2nd Ward), Cynthia Daley (4th Ward) and Aurelio Diaz (5th Ward). Mansfield Law Director Rollie Harper also attended, as did Richland County Prosecutor Jodie Schumacher.
None of the elected officials spoke during the meeting.
As now configured, the Police Review Commission assesses that investigation to determine if it was “thorough, accurate, credible and impartial.”
The commission, which has no current authority to conduct its own investigations, can also make recommendations to the mayor and police chief on how to improve the public and the department.
The commission in its current form is defined in Section 175 of the city’s codified ordinances and can be read here.
According to the statute, the commission is to “study and review those functions of the Division of Police investigations process consistent with the purpose and intent for which it was created; provided, however, that the Commission has no authority to conduct its own investigations, call or subpoena witnesses or impose disciplinary action against any police employees.”
Three years ago, Davenport said the proposal — titled the Wayne McDowell Police Review Board Ordinance — would be the next step in a process McDowell started when he helped launch the Black and Brown Coalition and assisted in the development of a Code of Conduct between the MPD and the community in 2020.
A longtime civil rights advocate and educator, McDowell died in January 2021.
“This is the vision of Wayne McDowell,” Davenport said at the time. “It was a part of the last conversation we had before he passed away.”
(Below are photos taken during a “Town Hall” on Monday evening organized by the Mansfield Chapter of the NAACP at the Legacy Academy of Excellence on Trimble Road.)
