After years of roadblocks and a recent perfect storm of obstacles that have long limited its operations, the Charlottesville Police Civilian Oversight Board is finally gaining momentum, and has big plans.

It’s going to start by revisiting its entire police oversight model.

There have already been improvements that signal a shift. In October, City Council appointed two new PCOB members, restoring the quorum the Board lost last spring when half its members, including the chair, resigned. With quorum restored, the Board elected a chair and vice chair at its November meeting. Then, on Nov. 17, City Council approved ordinance changes to clean up confusing “housekeeping” language.

For PCOB, this is just the first stop in resolving the challenges that have limited its functionality since 2019, when the initial Board became functional.

Now, with momentum on its side and Council’s renewed attention and commitment, Board members are eager to use the moment to strengthen the agency. The next step is a major one: reconsidering the police oversight model that defines what PCOB can do in Charlottesville. The current model, which asks the Board to do everything — investigate complaints, audit internal police investigations, analyze policing practices and systemic trends — without accounting for time, financial, and legal constraints, simply doesn’t work, as current and former leadership told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

“We’re looking at a number of options that would work within the constraints, the legal, the union, the employment, the budgetary, so that we can really do an effective job of providing oversight to the police department,” Jeffrey Fracher, the new PCOB chair, told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

In its current state, the civilian volunteer part of the Board has been a “window dressing” to PCOB’s more powerful director’s office, as Fracher described it more than once. The director’s office is staffed by a city employee with more access and has been performing the majority of the oversight duties while the volunteer board has been waiting for the challenges of the current model written into the ordinance to be resolved.

“The Board has been pretty much in a placeholder, treading water as far as actual hearings and being able to to perform the way the ordinance has outlined it,” said Fracher.

Four people dressed professionally sit at a long table. While one person speaks, gesturing with his hand, the other three watch him listening.
Al Pola, (speaking at the right side of the table) stepped in as the chair of Police Civilian Oversight Board as of January 2025. He and three other board members resigned in the spring of 2025. He told the City Council that flawed ordinance and other challenges have made it nearly impossible for the board to fulfill its mission, and Council needs to intervene. “It is clear that the board cannot achieve its intended impact without structural reforms and meaningful support,” Pola wrote in his resignation letter. Credit: Photo courtesy of The Presidential Precinct, a Charlottesville-based nonprofit.

There are three civilian oversight models, according to the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE), a non-profit organization that supports civilian police oversight nationally: the review model, which assesses the police department’s own internal investigations; the audit and monitoring model, which analyzes systemic issues, trends and policies; and the investigation model, which allows for independent investigations into complaints against police.

Charlottesville’s PCOB has a hybrid model, which mixes all three: PCOB is asked to review existing policies and policing practices and make suggestions on improvements, audit internal police investigations and, when necessary, launch their own.

By accounts of the previous and current leadership, those are unreasonable expectations of the civilian volunteers.

While PCOB’s volunteer board could launch an investigation, either by hiring someone to do so or tasking its director, it can’t compel an accused CPD staff member to testify. It can’t force government employees to incriminate themselves in a potential criminal investigation. 

Police departments get around this by issuing what are called Garrity warnings, which guarantee that anything an officer says in an administrative investigation cannot be used against them in a criminal case. Only someone with the authority to discipline an officer can issue Garrity rights. In Charlottesville, that authority rests with the Chief of Police, not the PCOB.

Without this ability, there is no way to issue comprehensive findings and recommendations for discipline, PCOB’s previous Executive Director Inez Gonzalez explained to Charlottesville Tomorrow before stepping down from the position in August.

A woman sits at a table next to other people, speaking and gesturing with her hands.
Inez Gonzalez, former executive director of the Charlottesville Police Civilian Oversight Board, speaks during a February 2025 event. Gonzalez resigned from the PCOB effective Aug. 15, after a a series of exits from the board after members raised concerns about systemic issues that prevent the PCOB from achieving its goals. Credit: Courtesy of The Presidential Precinct

There is also the question of time commitment, which is a big obstacle — investigations are time-consuming and PCOB is made up of volunteers, many of whom have full-time jobs, Gonzalez has said. It’s not feasible to expect them to perform as many duties for the Board as the current model asks.

National experts on police oversight who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow agreed that PCOB’s hybrid model, particularly its investigative authority, might be too ambitious for a city of its size.

Christy Lopez, faculty co-director of the Center for Innovations in Community Safety at Georgetown Law, said that one of the successful models in her opinion is a board of volunteers that specializes on policy review and an auditor retained to step in whenever there is a need to probe the results of the internal police investigation.

“Charlottesville isn’t so large. Maybe you don’t need a full time auditor, but you can there. You can find someone who they do this as their part time job,” she said.

It shouldn’t be the job of the Board’s director — that’s something Charlottesville’s current model allows its current director to undertake if the Board doesn’t choose to hire an outside expert — she said.

This is what PCOB is now set to do, according to the discussion during its November meeting. The Board asked its interim director James Walker to prepare information about available options so it can choose and make recommendations to the City Council during their next joint session.

“There is a clear commitment from the City Council to continue working towards a model of oversight,” said Walker during the November meeting. The Council wants to “get the Board’s perspective on what the Board sees as its role in oversight.”

City Councilor Michael Payne echoed these sentiments.

“I think City Council fully understands that the current structure isn’t delivering oversight that’s as effective as what the community hoped for, and we are open to any changes that will make the PCOB more effective as long as its independence and power to provide effective oversight aren’t diluted,” Michael Payne, Charlottesville City Councilor, told Charlottesville Tomorrow in a message in November. 

The next joint meeting between Council and PCOB isn’t scheduled yet, but it is expected sometime early next year, Fracher said.

But the process of changing a model won’t be a simple one, Payne told Charlottesville Tomorrow in the summer — it requires extensive community input. The current model was chosen because the community wanted the highest level of oversight, he said.

So, to change it now, the process would require a new conversation with the Charlottesville community.

PCOB Director Walker said in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow that the new model should consider what the community wants it to be, and what results it wants it to achieve.

“This question is at the core of selecting what model of oversight the ordinance should reflect,” he wrote. ” Each model of oversight has opportunities and implications related to policy structure, resources needed, and time commitment.”

While the road ahead won’t be simple, the movement and attention that came from the City Council after PCOB found itself in crisis without a quorum is encouraging for the Board.

“It’s the most hopeful and enthusiastic I have been during my entire tenure on PCOB. I’m really, really excited that the Council is going to work with us,” said Francher. He has been on the Board for almost six years, and recently he had been feeling so frustrated he said he considered quitting. The new members, the Council’s attention, and the recent housekeeping changes to the Ordinance — even if the latter were just “a pretty low hanging fruit” — renewed his hope.

“We’re going to pull the community in, and we’re going to get a model that works,” said Fracher.

If Charlottesville succeeds, it could become a positive example within a bigger pattern.

“Lots of cities have struggled,” said Rachel Harmon, law professor and a director of the Center for Criminal Justice at the University of Virginia School of Law with extensive expertise in police oversight. “Everyone wants a civilian oversight board, but it’s very hard to make them work well, and many cities have been ultimately dissatisfied with what they’ve got.” “People attribute that to a lot of different features, but one cause is that it is hard to sustain the political will that it takes to make a Board successful. They’re often born in crisis, and when the crisis is over, cities might not provide the kind of attention and resources that it takes. They’re inherently a challenging project.”

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