Voter-Mandated Police Oversight Board Meets for First Time
Two years after the election, the board begins its work
By Austin Sanders, Fri., May 30, 2025
Two years after the voter-approved Austin Police Oversight Act became law, one of its central components has finally been enacted.
The Community Police Review Commission – a city board composed of volunteers who oversee both the Office of Police Oversight and the Austin Police Department – met for the first time, May 16. The slow launch of the CPRC fits into a broader pattern of the city moving slowly to implement the Oversight Act.
In September 2023, City Council passed a resolution urging staff to fully implement the ordinance. Then in October 2024, Equity Action – the group that wrote the Oversight Act and campaigned for its ballot measure – filed a lawsuit against the city (the suit is still pending) seeking a similar outcome. Last month, OPO finally released an annual report covering its activity in 2023 – another long-delayed piece of the Oversight Act that the city finally implemented. For starting up the new oversight board, specifically, city staff set a deadline for CPRC members to have been fully trained and ready to begin their work by the end of last year.
The city blew past that deadline, but commissioners showed their eagerness to begin CPRC work as soon as possible – looking into cases of police violence, reviewing how OPO conducts investigations into complaints made against officers, and offering policy recommendations to both APD and OPO. Much of the first meeting revolved around establishing bylaws for the commission; without them, members would not be legally allowed to fulfill any of the responsibilities bestowed upon them by the Oversight Act.
But frustration over the city’s delays in formally launching the commission was clearly expressed by some members. “It feels like we’re being slow-walked,” Commissioner Terry Flood said at one point during the meeting that ran about 90 minutes. “The answers that I’m looking for [are how] we’re gonna move forward, because we’ve done all the prerequisites, but when do we actually get to do the work?”
With commissioners voting to elect a chair and vice chair (John Banaski and Laura Cortes Franco, respectively) and approving bylaws, they can now proceed toward that work. Based on comments made by several commissioners, it appears that one of the CPRC’s first orders of business will be to establish a working group tasked with recommending changes to the commission bylaws to ensure more fidelity with language included in the Oversight Act. Any changes would need approval from Council’s Audit and Finance Committee.
The CPRC is expected to meet the third Friday of every month at 2:30pm in the Boards and Commissions room at City Hall.
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