It’s Sept. 24, and I’m standing outside of the Spencer M. Patrick Auditorium at the Wayne State University Law School. I’m waiting for a candidate forum to begin, but unlike the dozens of mayoral or City Council forums I’ve attended over the past five months, this event was for Detroit’s Board of Police Commissioners, the 11-member civilian board tasked with oversight of the Detroit Police Department.

In other words, this board polices the police. 

Having spent a significant amount of time covering BOPC meetings for BridgeDetroit, I see some familiar faces walking through the lobby. Some are candidates and community members I’ve known for years. Some are candidates I had never met in person, until BridgeDetroit hosted our own BOPC candidate forum this past summer. Others are people I vaguely recognize from other community events.

Unfortunately, as I walk into the auditorium, there is something I don’t see: more than 12 people in the audience.

While it would be easy to blame the event organizers, or the candidates, for not inviting more people, I know the culprit is much more amorphous than a single organization or person. It’s apathy toward and even ignorance of the board itself.

Seven of the board’s 11 members are chosen by district, one for each council district. None of the districts had enough candidates ― two ― to be featured on the August primary ballot. Of the 26 candidates running for the board, only five will appear on the Nov. 4 general election ballot. The rest are write-in candidates, dependent on voters remembering that they’re candidates, and writing their names on their ballots. If no write-in candidates win in the districts where no official candidates are on the ballot, the next mayor will appoint someone to fill the seat.

A brief history of Detroit’s Board of Police Commissioners

Back when the board was founded in 1974, then-Mayor Coleman A. Young wanted to distance the city from the memories of the 1967 rebellion, which began as a response to police violence against Black residents. Detroit was dealing with an issue that many cities across the country were, and still are, dealing with: white police officers habitually mistreating Black residents. The embodiment of that mistreatment was a Detroit Police unit called Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets ― or STRESS. 

From 1971 to 1974, STRESS was notorious for targeting young Black people, young men in particular. In that timeframe, the unit killed 24 men total, 22 of whom were Black. 

The City Charter tasked the civilian oversight board with holding the city’s police force accountable. To do that, Young knew the board needed Detroiters on it. 

Back when the BOPC was founded, only nine other cities across the country had police oversight boards. Fast forward to 2025, and that number has grown to 61 cities. 

Police oversight in Detroit today

Social movements like Black Lives Matter and the wave of George Floyd protests in 2020 put more scrutiny on policing in the U.S., which is when I first began paying close attention to Detroit’s oversight board. 

I would often tell people I was “watching the BOPC meeting over Zoom,” and their first question was always, “What’s BOPC?” I would tell them what the acronym stands for, and most people replied that they didn’t know such a body existed in Detroit. 

I’d sit at my desk, watching these meetings on my laptop for hours. The Charter assigns the board the duty of approving or rejecting Detroit Police Department policies, and recommending disciplinary actions against members of the department who have violated said policies, or superseding laws. Sometimes, the board would discuss new technology the department wanted to use, particularly surveillance equipment. Other times, commissioners would debate the severity of an officer’s misconduct before moving into a closed session to go into more detail about what the officer had done wrong. But more often than not, these meetings would act as an extended press conference for the police department. That’s not inherently a bad thing, by the way. 

For a young reporter following the police department, it helped contextualize the statistics the department would publish, and it would provide me some much-needed information regarding alleged misconduct cases. 

The problem is that the board rarely discussed the details of police misconduct, and ways to address it systemically, in front of the audience. Commissioners would regularly praise former Police Chiefs James Craig and James White, while commending the efforts of the department.

Residents who called in for public comment would regularly claim the board was acting as a public relations firm for DPD rather than an oversight body. 

Activists who wanted more than anything to change the department skipped out on running for seats on the board, or even deeply engaging with the board, because they believed it wasn’t possible for the board to address the systemic issues of policing.

Commissioners have said union contracts undercut their charter-mandated oversight over police officers who violate the rules. “The charter says we are the final authority, but that is not true,” former commission chair WIllie Bell said at a December 2021 meeting. “Perhaps that was true in the 70s and 80s but the contract and arbitration supersede that.”

One mechanism the board does have to hold the police department accountable is the citizen complaint process. But if those complaints stay backlogged ― meaning they are in the system for longer than 90 days ― the actions of the department aren’t being dealt with publicly. There are currently more than 2,840 open citizen complaint cases in the system, according to the city’s Police Accountability Dashboard. 

For those reasons and more, the board was not consistently addressing the issues it was formed to address. 

Why does this matter now?

That brings us back to that Wednesday evening this past September, where I’m sitting in a nice but mostly empty auditorium listening to a group of candidates discuss how they might improve the board, if elected. Many of these candidates were actually talking about the reasons the board was founded, the pervasive issues with citizen complaints not being adequately addressed and even the board’s reputation for being chaotic and ineffective during meetings. 

Luckily, Wayne State’s law school did record a video of the forum. You can watch it here. But the issue is that without Detroit residents present for BOPC-related forums, meetings, or public hearings, the ability to provide tangible oversight is hollow ― or to paraphrase a former BOPC candidate ― if Detroiters aren’t engaging, the rules of the game aren’t changing. 

There is good news, however, for Detroiters who want and believe in real civilian oversight. There is an election happening right now in Detroit, and the people running for BOPC this year, seem to know about all the issues with the board historically.

Holding city officials accountable is a long and difficult process. One of the shortcuts in that process is voting in people who are qualified enough to do the job correctly.

Bryce Huffman is the Engagement Editor for BridgeDetroit.

Editor’s note: If a seat remains empty after the general election, the next mayor will appoint a commissioner. Appointments are subject to approval by the Detroit City Council.