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Carroll County board weighs posting complaint tracker online amid ADA and publicity concerns
Summary
Carroll County PAB members discussed publishing their complaint tracker on the county website, with county IT raising ADA accessibility and mobile‑responsiveness issues and members debating quarterly posting vs. annual reporting to limit media cycles.
Carroll County Police Accountability Board members debated how and when to publish the board’s complaint tracker after staff presented an updated tracker that covers complaints through last February.
Board staff said the tracker had fallen out of date during a personnel transition and that the team reconstructed records to bring it current. ‘‘We assembled all the files and data that we had . . . and we did our best to bring this tracker up to date,’’ a staff member told the board.
Chris, the county IT/public‑relations staff member, told the board the document in its current spreadsheet form is not suitable for the county website because of accessibility and mobile‑viewing problems. ‘‘One of the biggest reasons is ADA compliance and mobile responsive,’’ Chris said, adding that the Justice Department guidance on web accessibility makes large tables difficult to display cleanly. ‘‘Tables are great for sharing that information internally . . . but when it comes to Web, we avoid them like the plague,’’ he said.
Board members discussed alternatives: converting the tracker to a narrative or summary format, incorporating it into the annual report, or publishing a simplified summary online quarterly. Some members worried about media attention if the tracker is refreshed every three months; one member said newspapers focused on ACC cases after the tracker was posted in a previous year.
Staff proposed two practical steps discussed at the meeting: (1) decide whether the tracker should be a standalone quarterly public posting or integrated into the PAB annual report, and (2) explore a web‑friendly summary narrative that meets ADA requirements. The board said it will hold an internal meeting to develop a community‑outreach approach describing what complaints are legitimate and how the process works.
Why it matters: Publishing complaint data supports transparency but raises accessibility, privacy and community‑engagement questions. The board must balance public access with readability and the potential for repeated media scrutiny.
Looking ahead: The PAB chair said an internal PAB meeting will be scheduled to finalize how the tracker will be shared publicly and what summary or narrative format will be used.
