Courtesy of Dana Walton-Macaulay
Audio By Carbonatix
This week, Dana Walton-Macaulay will meet with community members as part of the Denver Citizen Oversight Board’s search for the city’s next Independent Monitor. The two other finalists – Joseph Lipari, who works as the police monitor in Boulder, and Bob Booth, who works in the Colorado Attorney General’s Office – will be at the virtual meetings, too.
Booth did not respond to an interview request, and Lipari declined to talk before the two meetings set for February 16 and 17: “I’m really looking forward to meeting community members…and hearing from them directly about their specific priorities for oversight and accountability in Denver,” he said. But Walton-Macaulay was more than willing to speak with Westword about what makes her a good fit for the job.
“I’m really excited about the opportunity. … I really want this position to be if the community feels good about my being there, and I want the community to be excited about working with me. I’m not saying I want a welcome parade with roses,” says Walton-Macaulay, who currently works as deputy director at the Independent Police Review in Portland, Oregon. She joined that group in July 2019.
The next independent monitor will be stepping into large shoes left behind by Nick Mitchell, the man who steered the Office of the Independent Monitor from 2012 to late 2020. The widely respected Mitchell, who issued reports assessing and criticizing in-custody jail deaths and the Denver Police Department’s response to the George Floyd protests, resigned the position to take a job overseeing reform in the Los Angeles County jail system (he still lives in Denver). Since Mitchell’s resignation, Gregg Crittenden, a senior deputy monitor, has been serving as interim head of the Office of the Independent Monitor, which watches over not only police conduct, but also the Denver Sheriff Department, which runs the city’s correctional system. The post was created by then-Mayor John Hickenlooper in 2004.
While Mitchell and his predecessors were appointed by the Denver mayor, that will not be the case this time. In November 2021, voters approved a charter change referred to the ballot by Denver City Council, and the mayor will no longer select the independent monitor. Instead, the Citizen Oversight Board has that task, with the final choice to be approved by Denver City Council. The COB, which comprises nine citizens – four of whom are appointed by the mayor, four by council, and one jointly by the mayor and council – oversees the effectiveness of the Office of the Independent Monitor and advises the city on policies related to law enforcement and public safety.
“The new independence piece for the Independent Monitor office would make me a good fit for that position, being an outsider, being able to kind of get a lay of the land without worrying about compromising your work,” suggests Walton-Macaulay. “I do recognize that not living in Denver currently, you have to come into a position and a seat like that, and you have to do that with humility.”
Before joining Portland’s Independent Police Review, Walton-Macaulay, a lawyer and Missouri native, worked as a higher education administrator dealing with student conduct at various universities, including the University of Kentucky, Penn State University and Portland State University. But it was her work in police oversight that placed Walton-Macaulay in a particularly challenging professional role.
In November 2020, Portland voters overwhelmingly approved a measure placed on the ballot by Portland City Council to establish a new police oversight board that would be stronger than the Independent Police Review, which is housed in the city auditor’s office.
“When the ballot measure passed, this was supposed to only take eighteen months,” says Walton-Macaulay. “This is a much slower process than I think we contemplated. … It’s a huge lift to build something like this from scratch. One of the things that the auditor has been asking for is: What is council’s plan for transitioning from the current oversight that we have to the new oversight that you’re going to build? There has not been an answer from council yet.”
Walton-Macaulay concedes that the uncertainty surrounding the Independent Police Review and her future in Portland contributed to her seeking alternatives. “The way that the ballot initiative was talked about kind of discredited the leadership of the office,” Walton-Macaulay says. “I think it would be easier for them to have new management and new leadership in the new office.”
With a lot of turnover in the Portland Police Department, it’s been tough to establish long-lasting rapport with police staffers, she adds. “One of the things is that it’s a little more stable in Denver,” Walton-Macaulay notes. And that would give her a chance to really dig into the job.
“My understanding is that the office doesn’t have great deficits in the work that they’re doing,” she says. “I wouldn’t come in with the intention to steamroll everything and start from scratch. I’d figure out where are the areas of opportunity for me to be able to champion that work.”
There’s plenty of work to do, and in the post-George Floyd environment, police-oversight professionals are subject to a higher level of scrutiny.
“I think that working in police oversight is something where you have to be really intentional about maintaining your objectivity,” she explains. “It’s a lot of work…to make sure that the community sees and trusts your work, but also [that] the law enforcement agencies that you’re holding accountable see and trust your work.”
The Wednesday, February 16, Citizen Oversight Board community meeting with the Independent Monitor finalists will run from 5:30 to 7 p.m.; find the link for the virtual event here. The meeting on Thursday, February 17, will also run from 5:30 to 7 p.m.; find the link here.
