Syracuse Citizen Review Board fixes online-submission glitch, pledges outreach and urges council to update oversight law

The Syracuse Citizen Review Board told the City Council that a technical glitch diverted online complaint submissions to an individual email account, producing an apparent backlog of roughly 157 reports — 38 of which need full processing and are approaching an 18-month expiration window.

"We discovered that the complaints that were being submitted, there was a glitch — they were going to Raynett's email address and not coming to CRB," said Speaker 4, a CRB staff member, explaining that the office worked with IT to fix the routing error and begin processing cases.

Why it matters: Board members and staff said the issue interrupted timely review and risked losing the ability to adjudicate some matters under an 18-month statutory limit. While cases that pass the 18-month mark become moot for hearings, the CRB said it still forwards systemic concerns to the Syracuse Police Department for training and policy attention.

"Once that 18 month mark...there's nothing that we can do," Speaker 1 said, describing the statutory limit that prevents the board from holding hearings on expired matters. Speaker 1 said the CRB will continue to flag recurring issues to Chief Cecil and requested that the council be provided the report compiled for the department.

Board staff provided concrete counts and follow-up actions: of the initial 157 submissions identified during the audit, staff said many were duplicates or already on file and that 38 required full intake-to-resolution processing. The CRB reported it has mailed 57 closure letters for older (2022–2023) cases; 15 of those were returned as undeliverable.

The board also described operational improvements and outreach efforts intended to strengthen oversight and public trust. Speaker 1 said integrating Evidence.com has made evidence retrieval "really smooth," allowing CRB reviewers to pull recordings and files in real time rather than waiting for compiled requests from internal operations. (Evidence.com is a product of Axon.)

Staff described a series of community-focused activities: tabling at a Community Folk Art Center Halloween event, outreach at Roberts Middle School and a "Working Young Men" program, distributing cards to students about how to respond if stopped by police, and plans to table at an OCC senior fair. Speaker 4 said quarterly meet-and-greets with police chiefs and a 911 center tour helped the CRB explain dispatch priorities to residents and guide outreach materials.

Recruiting an investigator remains a challenge. The CRB posted the position on Indeed with detailed qualifications but said some promising candidates were ineligible because of temporary work visas or green-card timelines that made long-term hiring impractical.

On policy, several council members and board representatives urged consideration of legislative updates to remove operational obstacles the CRB faces. Speaker 3 and others described the current rules as "antiquated" and said revisions would require council action and community engagement; Speaker 5 noted that prior changes in 2011 created the present framework for community collaboration.

Board leadership also raised personnel items: Speaker 2 corrected the record to note Octavia Christina Gurnhardt is the CRB's First District appointee, and staff said they had requested that the mayor extend the partial term of Margaret Ann Chase to a full term.

What comes next: The CRB asked the council for continued support, requested access to the compiled notes sent to the police department, and said it will schedule meetings with the incoming police chief to build working relationships. The council thanked the CRB for the update and adjourned the session.