It should, depressingly, come as no surprise that in creating a panel of community members to participate in the oversight of our law enforcement officers the news would not come from the recommendations of the panel about police misconduct, but rather from the simple existence of the panel.

In other words, we have found a way to redirect the central controversy away from police misconduct and onto our efforts to stop police misconduct.

It is endlessly frustrating and speaks to our dispiriting cultural trend of not being willing (or able) to tolerate those we disagree with. Instead of seeking common ground and a collaborative solution, our time and energy are squandered in an effort to silence dissenting views.

The most recent wrench in the gears of oversight in Boulder was the removal of Lisa Sweeney-Miran from the Police Oversight Panel.

Sweeney-Miran was removed following a complaint filed by two Boulder citizens alleging she showed “real or perceived bias” for her involvement in an ACLU lawsuit against the city regarding the forcible removal of tents and in a series of social media posts. A formal investigation by an outside attorney (which cost the city $20,000) recommended Sweeney-Miran resign or, if she refused, for the City Council to remove her.

After Sweeney-Miran refused to resign, the Council voted 5-2 to remove her.

Her removal, though, didn’t sit well with the remaining 10 oversight panelists. The following week, the panel voted to suspend most of its operations. (The panel will continue reviewing cases it has already committed to reviewing, but it will pause consideration of new cases.)

The focus for the remaining panelists now is to get the City Council to (again) revise the ordinance that governs the panel. In fact, the panel created a working group to propose their desired ordinance changes.

The work of the oversight panel has returned to trying to define how exactly the oversight panel should work. In two years of attempting to create a mechanism for greater input from marginalized communities and greater accountability for our police, we have succeeded in creating a panel to try to figure out how such a panel should work.

It’s turtles all the way down.

Here, we can’t help but sigh and ask: What exactly were you expecting, Boulder?

The root of the panel’s current trouble seems to come back to one phrase in Title 2, Chapter 11 of Boulder’s City Code: “real or perceived bias.”

The ordinance states: “Members of the police oversight panel shall be volunteers who, immediately prior to appointment, shall demonstrate … An absence of any real or perceived bias, prejudice or conflict of interest …”

Boulder’s Police Oversight Panel was created in the wake of Boulder Police’s 2019 confrontation with Zayd Atkinson and the heavily protested 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. The fierce unrest that followed laid bare the generational trauma that has been systemically imposed upon marginalized communities around our country — including here in Boulder.

The outrage was just. Reform was — and remains — necessary.

But therein lies the problem. How is it possible to be unbiased on this issue? The statement “Reform was — and remains — necessary” could easily be considered a “perceived bias.”

When our nation is confronted with the video footage of another brutal police killing, can anyone really, honestly say they are without bias?

And what is the harm of a group of panelists tasked with making recommendations admitting that they would like to see police officers held accountable for their misdeeds?

To be clear, this is not an argument in favor of Sweeney-Miran’s presence on the panel, but rather a condemnation of our community’s inability to recognize the dire nature of a problem and collaboratively work together toward a solution.

It should not be contentious to want to ensure people follow the rules. Nor should it be controversial to appoint citizens who are critical of the police to an oversight panel.

And it would be our hope that our police department — and citizens supportive of the police — would welcome anyone to join the oversight panel, which is an act of throwing open the curtains and shining the light to show that there is nothing to see here. Because, conversely, advocating for less oversight (or more supportive oversight) can create the appearance — warranted or not — that there is something worth hiding.

Of course, policing is an incredibly difficult job. Every day is confronting the worst day in someone’s life — over and over. It is exhausting. It is dangerous. It is selfless.

But these truths cannot be excuses. And recognizing the potential for misconduct is not a blanket statement that all police are inherently bad.

Law enforcement officers are granted special powers and privileges in order to keep the peace. And, while the duties of keeping the peace are vast (and should not all be the burden of the police), they are all fundamentally about ensuring that we citizens can reasonably expect to live our lives in safety.

This implicit contract, though, has never existed for some communities in our country. For far too long, the people charged with keeping people safe have instead made communities of color feel unsafe. And this fact holds true no matter the intention of a single police officer or an entire department — after centuries of racism and systemic abuses of justice some people feel unsafe around the police, and they have every right to.

It is imperative today that our police departments and our local governments and our communities be working to rectify this infuriating imbalance: Everyone deserves to feel safe.

This is exactly why we need initiatives like the Police Oversight Panel. And why we need to be working together to create real and meaningful change — even if we don’t always agree with those we are working alongside.

It is our hope that we can learn from this absurd fracas, that the city ordinance can be updated in such a way as to allow the oversight panel to function, and that we as a community can learn to acknowledge and respect the fact that there will always be members of this community who do not agree with us but whose perspectives nonetheless hold value and are worth being heard.

It’s time we return our focus from the Police Oversight Panel back to where it belongs: How we all can continue working toward creating a safe, equitable community for all of our neighbors.