Public Comment: Resident Oversight Board Needs Investigative Powers
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By Erica Piedade, Martha Hanner, Debora Ferreira, and Rani Parker
The following public comments were offered at the Government Organization and Legislation Committee (GOL) meeting on September 8, 2026.
Two models are under consideration for a Resident Oversight Board to field complaints about the Amherst Police Department (APD): a review model in which the APD would investigate police misconduct and determine consequences, and an investigative model in which the ROB would conduct its own investigations. Four residents, Erica Piedade, Martha Hanner, Debora Ferreira, and Pat Ononibaku, offered public comment, and all argued emphatically that an effective ROB must be empowered to conduct its own investigations, as did Rani Parker, who submitted her comment in writing. Hanner and Parker also argued that neither model is sufficient as proposed and suggested that the committee adopt neither but make recommendations for a bylaw appropriate for Amherst for an ROB that builds trust and accountability. The comments of all by Ononibaku are reproduced below.
The ROB That the Town Already Committed To
By Erica Piedade
More than four years ago, the Community Safety Working Group’s Part B report laid out a specific, detailed template for this board. It called for:
- A board of at least five members — four BIPOC, two of African American descent
- A real operational budget
- Training for board members
- Full investigative authority: the power to hire an independent investigator, subpoena witnesses, compel sworn testimony, and access the documents needed to actually resolve a complaint.
That last piece — investigative power — isn’t optional add-on language. The working group was explicit: oversight works, for police and residents alike, only if it has teeth. It builds trust, protects civil rights, and directly addresses the bias and distrust that exist between the police department and Amherst’s BIPOC communities.
And this isn’t hypothetical or untested. Springfield, Cambridge, and Boston all already operate civilian oversight boards with exactly this kind of authority. Amherst wouldn’t be the first city in Massachusetts to do this — it would be catching up to what other communities have already proven works.
Erica Piedade is a resident of Amherst and a member of the town’s Community Safety and Social Justice Committee.
Community Trust
By Martha Hanner
I am concerned by the serious (sobering) lack of trust across our community regarding interactions with the Amherst Police Department (APD). This lack of trust became very clear to me from discussions with town officials, including police, and with many residents while our League of Women Voters (LWV) Racial Justice Committee was preparing our 2025 review of the Community Safety Working Group’s (CSWG) recommendations.
The mistrust is in both directions; police feel unfairly criticized, while many residents feel that the police do not understand (or are unwilling to admit) the problems.
Effective policing requires mutual trust and cooperation. When people are afraid to report crimes, call for assistance, or step forward as witnesses, effective policing and public safety suffer. This is a serious problem that our
Town Council needs to address; indeed, past council resolutions have committed the council to address (see council resolution 11/14/22 as well as earlier resolutions).
I am particularly concerned that our police officials do not seem to recognize the fear of uniformed, armed police among non-caucasian community members, despite the national publicity and the unlawful actions of ICE.
The town has commissioned at least 5 independent surveys since 2021:
- CSWG public testimony and October 2021 Report
- 7 Generations Movement Collective Report, May 2021
- Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) Amherst Community Responder Report, and Amherst Police Dept. Policy Review, Nov. 2021
- Rabbi Debra Kolodny, Final Report, A Tale of Two Towns
- Community Input on Resident Oversight Board, Feb. 2024;
- Tury Research Institute, Community Engagement and Needs Assessment for The Town of Amherst, MA, Aug. 2025
All of these studies document the same result: Many residents of color fear the police. They feel they are singled out for traffic stops, treated with disrespect, and assumed guilty in any interaction.
This challenge to the sense of safety of Amherst residents has taken on new urgency with the actions of masked ICE agents detaining both documented and undocumented immigrants, even citizens, sending them to detention centers or direct deportation, without due process.
I commend the GOL for making a careful review of the POST Commission. The POST Commission focuses on statewide certification of police officers and investigation of complaints of potential criminal actions by police. A complaint of such serious action by the APD is very unlikely. Our main concern is with “minor” police actions of discourtesy and mistreatment of residents based on race or ethnicity.
These are below the threshold for POST, but are upsetting to many residents. Thus, there should not be concern about “double jeopardy” and legal risk, as discussed at the June GOL meeting.
It is reasonable for a community of any size to have some degree of local oversight over the policies and actions of their police. This should now be the focus for GOL.
Need for a Local Oversight Board
A carefully constructed independent local board can go a long way towards reducing much of the mistrust here in Amherst. However, I do not think either of the two options before GOL is viable in the current town atmosphere. Further thought and discussion within GOL will be necessary to address the issues and develop the appropriate requirements for local oversight.
At least three important functions are needed, not necessarily performed by the same group:
1. Independent body to make a recommendation whether an incident is serious enough to refer to POST. A full investigation would not be necessary; that would be the role of POST — no double jeopardy. The local body would need the authority to engage an outside consultant; i.e., the local board does not need to have full legal expertise. I expect such action will rarely if ever be needed.
2. Independent body that can receive complaints and conduct credible investigation of claimed harassment, disrespect, unprofessional conduct below the POST threshold. Residents need to feel safe in submitting complaints, without fear of retaliation. APD members do not seem to believe these incidents happen; thus, such incidents must be carefully documented and compiled, so all parties can see the patterns and frequency. The body needs authority to collect data, but the body must not be punitive or disciplinary.
Real data — always the best way to build trust!!
3. The council and perhaps an appointed working group that reports to the council urgently need to plan ways to improve trust, not necessarily the same body that reviews complaints.
Facilitated discussions with APD: Why the fear? How is fear expressed or misinterpreted? What are the potential dangers of escalation and how can these be avoided? What does “harassment” mean to different individuals?
How can more constructive public interactions be achieved?
Consent Searches
The 2021 LEAP Report, “Amherst Police Dept. Policy Review,” called for APD to discontinue low-level and pretextual stops and consent searches of vehicles, stressing that these are conducted disproportionately against people of color, creating distrust without any clear benefit to public safety. Any traffic stop is potentially dangerous for the police officer as well as for the driver, so why conduct more than necessary for routine traffic safety?
Review of consent searches and pretextual stops was included in the council’s town manager goals for 2025 and 2026, but apparently never carried out. It is time for the council to take action to prohibit warrantless consent searches of vehicles.
Recommendations to GOL
The role of the GOL is vital for building trust and helping the various elements of our community to come together. We need your continued commitment!
I urge you:
1. Do not approve either version of the ROB bylaw with the language submitted to your committee in October 2025.
2. Make a clear verbal commitment at your Sept. 8 meeting that you take the lack of trust seriously and will continue working to create local oversight that does not conflict with POST.
3. Request that the full council direct you to continue working on drafting a bylaw for an independent oversight board appropriate for Amherst.
4. Recommend to the council that pretextual stops and consent searches of vehicles by our police without a warrant be prohibited. This straightforward prohibition will be a long-overdue significant step towards increasing trust.
Let me close with the following observation:
“None of us is safe until we are all safe” – Michael Greenebaum
Please note that, although I am a member of the Amherst LWV Racial Justice Committee, the views expressed here are my own.
Martha Hanner is a resident of Amherst’s District 5.
Town Attorney Was out of Line, Advising Against the Creation of an ROB
By Debora Ferreira
I don’t understand why there have been discussions about whether the Resident Oversight Board (ROB) should be established. The GOL was tasked by the Town Council to decide on one of the models proposed by the consultants. Our residents deserve the investigatory model proposed, although it was not as strong as the ROB proposal made by CSWG. But my points are focused on the June 23 GOL Committee meeting where KP Law’s Attorney Wendy Austin raised several objections to a ROB with real power. We want to answer each objection directly, in public.
1st argument she made:
“POST makes a local board unnecessary.”
Not so. Springfield, Cambridge, and Boston all built their oversight boards
before the state’s POST system existed — and none of them has disbanded its board since. Statewide certification and local, community-rooted oversight do different jobs. Amherst residents deserve both.
2nd argument she made:
“POST already handles credible complaints.”
The regulation requires action on a “credible report” — but it doesn’t specify who decides what counts as credible. Right now, that determination can sit with the very department the complaint is against. We know of at least one Amherst resident who filed directly with POST and was told POST wouldn’t handle it. That’s exactly the gap local oversight is meant to fill. The POST handles very high-level police misconduct, which is why POST was created. Therefore, there is no double jeopardy, and ROB is critically needed.
3rd argument she made:
“A ROB can’t legally get subpoena power.”
This is directly contradicted by existing law. Springfield’s Community
Police Hearing Board already has the authority to subpoena witnesses, compel testimony under oath, and require production of evidence. Cambridge granted its board the same powers by municipal ordinance. If they could write it into
law, so can we.
4th argument she made:
“How would members be trained?”
This has an answer already: NACOLE — the National Association for Civilian
Oversight of Law Enforcement — publishes established training standards used across the country. Amherst wouldn’t be starting from zero.
And finally — when council members asked Austin how a ROB could be structured, no answer came back. What we heard, instead and repeatedly, was a case for why not to build one at all. GOL needs to stop the procrastination and establish an empowered ROB with investigatory and subpoena powers. Enough with the procrastination and delay tactics. If the ROB is not put in place it is a slap in the face for all our residents but especially our BIPOC residents.
Debora Ferreira is a resident of Amherst and co-chair of the town’s Community Safety and Social Justice Committee
ROBs Work Elsewhere: Here’s How To Build One in Amherst
By Rani Parker
I was part of the Resident Oversight Board (ROB) stakeholder group during 2025-26. Among the things I learned during those discussions is that there are more than 240 civilian oversight boards in our country. Starting with the first one in 1953, by 2000 there were more than 100 and just one generation later, there were over 225.
Civilian oversight works. The stakeholders charged with developing a bylaw for a potential ROB here were very divided right from the start. Representatives
of the police unions quit early on. We started looking at different models used by different towns around the country, and eventually, as you see, we came to the two models which reflect the divisions in the group.
The way forward is to reject both options and to take advantage of an important change since the CSWG study – the establishment of the POST Commission. POST addresses a range of complaints and we should use them to the fullest. However, the POST Commission is unable to address two key conditions that contribute to mistrust in the Amherst community.
1. Residents need a safe space to file their complaints, a space which is not the APD. Very few complaints have been filed with the APD and data show that the low numbers do not reflect the experience of people of color. An ROB could provide a safe and trusted way to file a complaint.
2. The complaints documented in our studies and ones that I have personally heard are not of criminal activity, but of harassment, disrespect, and verbal abuse. These are categorized as “minor” by the Post Commission, and not likely to be taken on.
We are concerned about the types of complaints that are local, such as the July (2022) incident involving Amherst youth, which the POST Commission refused to investigate. It falls under “discourtesy”, described as a “minor matter.” For us, members of this community, it is serious, not a casual violation as implied in words like “discourtesy” or “minor.”
Police discourtesy is defined as behavior by a police officer that is impolite, disrespectful, or unprofessional. This can include insults, verbal abuse, or using inappropriate language. For residents, these behaviors are far from minor. The POST Commission’s instructions to police officers states (mapostcommission.gov):
“Minor matters need not to be reported as long as the agency has implemented an informal resolution process (i.e., verbal counseling or letters of counsel), of which documentation must be provided to POST upon request. Minor matters include discourtesy, basic work rule violations, tardiness, inattention to detail, equipment or grooming violations, and similar infractions.”
These definitions of what is critical to us, as being treated as “minor” and described as “discourtesy” need not even be reported as long as there has been verbal counseling or letter of counsel – meaning that these are not the violations that the POST will be prioritizing. They will focus on what they perceive to be bigger violations. They will look for patterns over time and then may choose to investigate minor matters.
Verbal counseling and letter of counsel are not adequate responses for residents who have been exposed to verbal abuse or harassment. In order to build trust, a more formal resolution process is required. There are ROBs around the country and they have grown over the years because they have been successful as local solutions to police-community relations. Other towns in Massachusetts have not eliminated their ROBs just because there is now a POST Commission.
Our ROB would address concerns that are largely about complaints of what the police refer to as discourtesy, including harassment directed toward people of color. We do not want a community where police engage in insults, verbal abuse or the use of inappropriate language. For us, this type of behavior is not a matter of courtesy, or a routine incident, but a sharp break in trust between residents and our police. I know that the few officers I have met would agree to the standards of community engagement that many of us are seeking. Nevertheless, our reality is that the data on police misbehavior with regard to people of color has not improved since the CSWG study. And, we need to address that.
I am not suggesting that volunteer residents should investigate police officers in criminal matters, or any matters that the POST Commission is willing to take up. No complaint that POST is willing to investigate needs to be investigated by the ROB also. There is no double jeopardy here and no need for duplicate use of public resources.
Any policy on ROB should start with a clear statement of purpose: to build trust between the police and people of color (and others) in our community. An ROB could investigate what are defined as “minor” matters by POST, discourtesy, disrespect, insults, verbal abuse, harassment. This limited scope would target our particular situation and place the work of the ROB in a space that ensures accountability with far less training than the two options you are considering, both of which involve investigating or reviewing all levels of complaints.
Further, body cams that are turned on and available as evidence can facilitate investigation by the ROB in the case of a complaint.
Where I am less clear is on consequences for police officers who violate community trust. I suggest considering a list of educational and training programs such as anger management, anti-racism, etc., and something else like unpaid community service. I cannot support a group of community volunteers deciding on “punishment” since members of the ROB would not know the full scope of an individual’s professional life. Ultimately it has to be the Police Chief and/or that individual’s supervisor, but there is a lot of scope for building a range of consequences varying in type and severity. These could be developed jointly by police and civilian representatives.
I believe that with this reduced, more targeted mandate, we can in fact implement a ROB that would begin to address the complaints raised repeatedly by residents of color. Such an ROB would have clear procedures and a training program for ROB members that will accommodate the fact that resident members will change every two or three years. The training need not be overly complicated. In this scenario, after the first year, new members could be trained with a video program with the option to discuss questions with an expert consultant…up to 15 or 30 minutes per person. Cost-wise, this approach is much more efficient and realistic for a volunteer board with changing members.
Further, our police unions will hopefully consider this approach. There is no double jeopardy here. This approach does offer residents an alternative to going directly to the police with complaints. Just as the police will report complaints to POST, the ROB could pass on complaints to the POST Commission in the event that they wish to take it up first. If they don’t, then the ROB would investigate.
Further, a review after three years could look at the effectiveness of the ROB as well as consider the changes within POST and the new external environment to determine how the ROB will continue its work.
This approach does not answer all questions – many details will have to be worked out with key stakeholders. But it does provide an alternative path that meets the real needs of many people of color in Amherst while also ensuring that we use existing resources efficiently and focus on building trust. Neither option currently being considered will achieve the goals of trust and accountability.
ROBs work – that’s why they are growing in number all over the country.
An important first step is to convince our predominantly white town leadership and the APD of the pressing need to take action. The fear that people of color feel when we encounter police is worsened now by ICE stops, and recent data from the New York Times showing that the vast majority of detainees now have no criminal record. That, combined with the Supreme Court’s ruling that it is okay to stop someone just because of how they look, puts additional fear into the hearts of every person of color.
Additional Comment: Consent Searches
One other policy step that I urge the GOL to put forward to the Town Council is to establish a policy that our police officers should not ask to search a vehicle without a warrant. This was a specific recommendation of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) in their 2021 Amherst Police Department Policy Review.
The request to search is intimidating and exacerbates fear. Further, a review of the police policy of consent searches was part of the GOL Town Manager goals but never carried out.
It only takes a decision by the council to change this policy; get rid of consent searches. There is no cost to the town, and no liability. And, it would provide a good start to demonstrating to residents that this Town Council has heard the many voices of color over years and will act to build police-community trust.
Rani Parker is a resident of Amherst and outgoing chair of the Town’s Human Rights Commission