"City Must Answer FBI On Police Board Charges," Times-Union, October 1, 1964
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Below is a scanned image of an editorial from the Times-Union. The editorial, "City Must Answer FBI On Police Board Charges," demanded that the City of Rochester address the issue of "outside review boards" such as the Police Advisory Board that "...crimp effective police work." The Times-Union editorial perspective was outlined in a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigations stating that the city better give evidence of the need for the PAB as it stands "accused by the nation's most respected law enforcement agency of rolling a huge roadblock into the path of those who seek to defend public safety." The clipping can be found at the Local History Department of the Monroe County Library Downtown Branch. "City Must Answer FBI On Police Board Charges," is an editorial and was published in the Times-Union newspaper on October 1, 1964.
While the Police Advisory Board became law on March 26, 1963 to address complaints against officers who used "excessive and unnecessary force" against them, the Locust Club police union did everything in its power to thwart it from actually accomplishing anything. Two injunctions were slapped on it by the court preventing it from conducting investigations and forwarding recommendations to the chief of police--it's primary functions. By the mid-1960s, new appointments to the board were needed to meet quorum in order for it to do its work. But neither Democrats nor Republicans appointed anyone to the board after it was found constitutional by the courts in 1969. It was then defunded and abolished in 1970 by the new Republican Party-lead Rochester city government.
