Tulsa Police Department seeking public feedback on community policing effort

The meetings and subsequent evaluation, the city said, are part of an effort to fulfill a recommendation on community engagement and policy assessment outlined in the Findings and Recommendations of the Tulsa Commission on Community Policing. The 10-page document created in 2017 outlined 77 recommendations for the Tulsa Police Department to improve community policing.

Since the commission’s findings were released, Tulsa police have been “implementing all recommendations except for the remaining recommendation for community policing evaluation and officer hiring,” the city said.

CNA’s evaluation will provide “actionable implementation steps to advance community policing in Tulsa through community engagement and policy assessment,” according to the city.

The final evaluation will help identify what community policing would look like in Tulsa and develop a “roadmap” for how to achieve that, the city said.

All Tulsa residents are invited to attend the community meetings at the following times next week:

Monday, 6 to 7:30 p.m., Central Center, 1028 E. Sixth St.

Tuesday, noon to 1:30 p.m., Rudisill Library, 1520 N. Hartford Ave. (Spanish-language translators will be available at this location.)

Mayor G.T. Bynum in September quashed plans to pursue the creation of an Office of the Independent Monitor over the Tulsa Police Department to improve police oversight due to “significant improvements” of community engagement under Chief Wendell Franklin, he told the Tulsa World in September, nearly three years after first proposing that such an idea could come to fruition through a collective bargaining process.

Many of Franklin’s initiatives, the mayor said, including the creation of Community Advisory Boards and an internal Use of Force Review Board, largely accomplish the main components of what he sought to establish through an OIM: the development of in-house policy analysis for TPD, increased community engagement and a mechanism of oversight.

The community boards’ main purpose is to serve as the public review piece of all of the department’s new or updated policies, but members are also privy to additional insight into significant police events and can advise on best practices for crime reduction and trust-building.

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