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Residents press Decatur City Council for transparent release of police review; council sets Friday deadline
Summary
Multiple public commenters called for immediate action and the public release of a Green Research review of the Decatur Police Department. Council members said the report will be posted on the city website no later than 5 p.m. Friday and discussed redaction and legal constraints; commenters called for the removal of Police Chief Todd.
Residents and community advocates used the public-comments portion of the Jan. 21 Decatur City Council meeting to press elected officials for immediate transparency and action after a months-long outside review of the police department.
Sarah French, a frequent public commenter, told the council she and others had waited for a long investigation and criticized the pace of public release. "I was actually told by someone in this building, whether it's true or not, the report was here January 1st," French said, adding that the community had been waiting months for the findings.
Multiple speakers said the outside review, conducted by Green Research, has heightened concerns about department conduct and leadership. One resident, identified in the meeting as Lisa, said she believed the problem lay with the chief and urged immediate removal: "I don't even care what's in the I mean, I care, but I don't care whose names it is. I think he's the issue, and we gotta get him out of here. He's gotta go," she said.
Members of the public repeatedly asked whether the report would be redacted and how quickly it would be released. A council speaker told attendees the city planned to post the report on the city website and said media would also have access; the council stated the report would be released "no later than 5 o'clock this Friday." Several commenters urged the council to release unredacted material where it would not jeopardize prosecutions or privacy.
Council members and speakers discussed legal constraints and prosecutorial concerns, including references to an existing gag order and to Morgan County courts and the district attorney's office. During the meeting a councilmember clarified the local process for removing the chief: it requires a supermajority of the full council (four votes), not a simple majority.
Speakers emphasized that Green Research had reviewed a large volume of footage: at the meeting a commenter summarized the review as 1,150 hours of body-worn camera footage and noted Green Research took about three months to complete the review. The commenter also walked through an illustrative calculation from the review: if the department has roughly 40 officers working eight-hour shifts, the reviewed footage equated to about 3.6 days of a department-year or roughly 1 percent of annual officer-hours — a point used to argue for broader transparency and additional review steps.
Several callers asked the council to be prepared at the next council meeting, after the report's release, to answer direct, specific questions rather than give blanket statements. Commenters said they wanted the council to act on findings quickly and to separate personal relationships from decisions about department leadership.
The council did not take formal disciplinary action during the meeting; instead members confirmed a release timeline and said they would discuss any required redactions with legal staff and counsel for law-enforcement prosecutions before posting the document.
