Dayton Community Appeals Board approves annual report, broadens recommendation on pretextual traffic stops

The Dayton Community Appeals Board on May 11 approved its 2025/2026 Annual Commission Report with revisions and voted to update its bylaws to align with the governing ordinance.

Board members spent much of the meeting reviewing outreach items slated for the report, including Know Your Rights presentations, Community Orientation Day participation, the Disrupting Dayton screening, and partnerships with Welcome Dayton and immigrant community leaders. HRC staff said new brochures have been developed for the Human Relations Council (HRC), the Community Appeals Board (CAB), Business and Technical Assistance, and the Office of Justice and Inclusion, and staff discussed plans to provide translated materials through community partnerships and to send email notifications about future events.

The Board also reviewed Dayton Police Department (DPD) bias‑free policing data — traffic‑stop, field interview, and crash statistics — and discussed disparities reflected in previous reports. Members raised concerns that focusing a recommendation only on window tint enforcement could miss other drivers of pretextual stops. The Board agreed to revise recommendation language to encourage examination of pretextual traffic stops involving minor equipment violations and minor driving infractions, rather than limiting the recommendation to window‑tint enforcement.

The CAB reviewed a newly located draft of its bylaws and discussed several revisions to ensure consistency with the governing ordinance. Among the changes members agreed to pursue were clarifying that removal authority rests with the City Commission (the Board may recommend removal but cannot itself remove members), documenting excused and unexcused absences in meeting minutes, specifying that the Chair is appointed by the City Commission while the Vice Chair is elected by the Board, and creating a limited, prior‑approval process for virtual participation when extenuating circumstances threaten quorum.

Votes and procedural actions at the meeting included approval of the Annual Commission Report and approval of the bylaws, each as amended with the further revisions discussed. The motions to approve the Annual Report and to approve the bylaws were each made by Catherine Hall and seconded by Terrilynn Griffith; both motions were carried. The meeting record does not provide a roll‑call tally in the minutes beyond noting the motions carried and that quorum was met.

The Board directed HRC staff to finalize the revised language for the Annual Report recommendation, continue work on outreach materials including translated brochures, and note attendance in future minutes to support any future consideration of attendance‑related issues.