Five months after slowly getting off the ground, the Miami-Dade Investigative Citizen’s Panel (ICP) took a major leap forward by nominating a veteran police oversight executive to lead the watchdog agency.
At its February meeting, the panel’s 12-member board selected Nicolle Barton, who currently heads the police oversight board in Ferguson, Mo., and is also in charge of that city’s efforts to implement police department reforms as mandated by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Barton will be the ICP’s first executive director should the Miami-Dade County Commission confirm her hiring. She beat out four other finalists, including the assistant inspector general for the Miami-Dade Inspector General’s Office and a former San Francisco sheriff. Barton did not respond to an email and phone message from the Biscayne Times seeking comment.
Eddie Dominguez, City National Bank’s managing senior vice president and a ICP board member who served on the panel’s executive director selection committee, told the Biscayne Times that Barton is an excellent pick.
“To me it’s a no-brainer,” Dominguez said. “She just stood head and shoulders above the rest. I don’t know what more we could ask for.”
Loreal Arscott, a Miami attorney and the ICP’s chairwoman, concurred.
(Twitter)
Nicolle Barton was hired as the first executive director for the St. Louis Civilian Oversight Board two years after the police-involved shooting and killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown that sparked civil unrest and protests in Ferguson, MO.
“Ms. Barton was the premier candidate,” Arscott said. “Her extensive background in police oversight is unparalleled.”
Two years ago, Miami-Dade County commissioners resurrected the ICP nearly a decade after a previous version called the Independent Review Panel was shut down. In a 8-5 vote, they approved a new civilian police oversight board’s creation, albeit one without the power to subpoena police officers.
At its first meeting in October 2021, the panel tasked three board members with nominating a top candidate for executive director, who will be responsible for putting together a staff and policies for the ICP to begin investigating citizen complaints against Miami-Dade County cops, as well as reviewing and making recommendations on the police department’s policies and procedures.
(law.com)
Loreal Arscott, ICP Chairwoman
Miami-Dade advertised the job on a dozen websites, including the county’s job portal, the American Bar Association, the Florida Bar Association, the Florida League of League of Cities and LinkedIn. Joshua Jones, a Miami personal injury attorney and the ICP board member who chaired the executive director screening committee, says Miami-Dade’s human resources department received résumés from 40 applicants who met the panel’s criteria.
“From that list, we selected five for interviews during a committee meeting in early January,” Jones said. “We then had two follow-up interviews with the top two candidates.”
Those turned out to be Barton and Ross Mirkarimi, a former San Francisco sheriff who is now a police department consultant.
Barton began her career in law enforcement in 2001 as a probation officer in St. Louis, moving up the ranks to parole unit supervisor in 2007, according to her résumé. Her duties as a supervisor included investigating allegations of office misconduct and ensuring that subordinates followed standards of professional conduct.
In 2016, two years after the police-involved shooting and killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown sparked civil unrest and protests in Ferguson, Barton was hired as the first executive director for the St. Louis Civilian Oversight Board. According to a personal essay she wrote for a project about police reforms in Missouri, the oversight panel encountered heavy resistance from the St. Louis Police Officers Association, such as filing a court injunction to prevent the board from accessing statements by police officers interviewed for internal affairs investigations.
But, Barton wrote, “The judge ruled in our favor and we got the officers’ statements.”
Barton also implemented a system for the St. Louis oversight board to obtain complaints of excessive force against police and corrections officers quickly and efficiently. In 2017, under her watch, the panel was granted subpoena power to obtain evidence related to police misconduct cases.
In 2019, Barton left St. Louis when she was hired as the consent decree coordinator for Ferguson. Her primary function was to make sure its police department implemented reforms that addressed a Justice Department investigation that found a litany of discriminatory practices within the police force. She was also put in charge of Ferguson’s civilian police oversight board, working out of an office next door to the police chief, according to local media reports.
Barton worked with the police department to hire more minority officers, rewrite use-of-force and traffic stop policies, and implement crisis intervention bias-free policing training, her résumé states. For example, the police department now regularly monitors officer behavior in use-of-force, vehicle pursuit and supervisor forms, according to a 2021 St. Louis Dispatch article. Officers also participate in training scenarios to lessen any bias about specific communities they serve and protect.
At the Miami-Dade ICP’s February meeting, Barton spoke to board members via Zoom about her plans to hit the ground running should the county commission accept her.
“There is a lot that goes into getting the office set up,” she said. “I know all the details that go into that.”
After hiring essential staff, new employees and board members will have to participate in extensive training sessions on ethics, policing, the police officers’ Bill of Rights, privacy, and the handling of confidential records and proper investigation techniques, among other requirements, Barton said.
“Standard operating procedures need to be established for internal controls, case management and time frames to complete investigations,” she said. “Once the panel and staff are fully trained, you can begin hearing and voting on cases.”
Barton said that she expected it will take up to six months for the panel to be ready to begin fulfilling its duties.
One of her main priorities will be establishing some form of trust and confidence with the Miami-Dade Police Department.
“You can’t get what you need without a good working relationship with the police department,” Barton said. “That is essential. The skills I obtained in Ferguson have really helped me think more about what 21st-century policing looks like and how we can bring that to the oversight arena.”
For local social justice and police reform advocates, Barton’s selection is a positive step for the nascent ICP. Jeanne Baker, an attorney serving on the board of the Miami chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was critical that someone with experience be selected.
“I want to emphasize there is a lot to be said for doing national search and finding somebody who has run this type of agency elsewhere and really knows how to do it,” Baker said. “Such a person may not know the internal politics of our county, but someone internal may not have the experience to run a [civilian investigative panel].”