Party-Line Vote of Senate Judiciary Clears Bill to Limit Nashville’s COB

The monthlong struggle of legislative Republicans to limit the powers of the Community Oversight Board voted into being last year by Metro residents reached its probable climax on Tuesday: A 7-2 vote by the state Senate Judiciary Committee passed the measure, SB 1407/HB0658, as amended. 

The effect of two amendments approved by the committee would backtrack the bill somewhat from its original purpose, that being to withhold subpoena power from the COB (or technically any similarly constituted civilian review board). One amendment  limits the authority to grant subpoenas to a judge and only at the request of a special investigator, a chief of police or the division of internal affairs of a police department. The other amendment establishes a year as the effective timetable for jurisdictions to comply. 

Tuesday’s vote was on party lines, with Democratic Sens. Sara Kyle and Katrina Robinson, both of Memphis — a city that also has a police review board — casting the no votes. The House version of the bill was passed last week and referred to the House Calendar and Rules Committee. The amended Senate version now goes to the Senate Calendar Committee, with the likely prognosis of imminent floor passage of a fully synchronized measure.

The COB. issue was No. 24 on a lengthy agenda in the Senate committee, and when it finally came up for discussion late in the day, several speakers testified both for and against it.

State Sen. Brenda Gilmore (D-Nashville) and the Rev. Davie Tucker asked the committee to reconsider the matter. Both asked the committee to consider using the provision of a year’s delay as a trial period, after which the limiting provisions of the bill (including the mandatory abandonment of demographic quotas for members) presumably might be withheld.

“This is not an anti-police bill," said Rev. Tucker. "It’s a quality-of-life issue."

Tucker, Sen. Gilmore and others noted that subpoenas from the board would not be exclusively or even mainly served on police under suspicion of misconduct toward citizens, but would also serve to compel evidence of surveillance videos and could be vital tools in clearing law enforcement officers of wrongdoing.

They also testified to the obvious — that fatal shootings of African-Americans by police had adversely affected police-citizen relations, and that the Community Oversight Board could help restore public trust.

Testimony was also heard from representatives of Knoxville, including Police Chief Eve Thomas, who commended the new amendments and the preservation of subpoena powers, even as distilled by the new amendments.