Police Advisory Commission (PAC) and Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) release a collaborative report that reviews and reforms the PPD discipline process.

Transparency and accountability are necessary to build trust between the PPD and the communities it serves. A major component of accountability is the discipline process that occurs when an officer has committed misconduct. Understanding this, the PAC and PPD embarked on a collaborative project to produce data-based reforms to bring additional consistency, thoroughness, and oversight to the PPD discipline process.

This report represents part 1 of this collaboration. Part 1 includes recommendations that will change how sustained misconduct is charged by the Department, who prosecutes administrative discipline cases, the rules of discipline hearings, and who sits as finders of fact during those hearings, among other reforms.

“Prior to beginning this collaboration with the PAC, the PPD’s disciplinary process had been conducted largely in private,” said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw. “The purpose of the PAC collaboration was to be transparent in our disciplinary process so that PAC could help the PPD identify areas for improvement. Demystifying the police disciplinary process in this way serves an important purpose: It helps our community better understand how our department investigates citizen complaints, and it also shows the public that as a learning organization, we are fully committed to collaborating with outside agencies. These types of interagency efforts not only speak to the PPD’s commitment to improving its legitimacy to the public, but also our commitment to refining our accountability measures.”

“The residents of Philadelphia deserve to have a police department that takes every possible step to hold officers accountable,” said Anthony Erace, Executive Director of the PAC. “This report provides concrete recommendations that, when implemented, will bring unprecedented changes to police discipline in this city.”

This report can be found on the PAC website under the reports section at: https://www.phila.gov/documents/police-advisory-commission-reports/

This report will be co-presented to the public during the next PAC public meeting on June 21, 2021 at 6:00 pm. Join us for this meeting on Zoom at https://tinyurl.com/PACJune21. Please contact the PAC at pac@phila.gov or (215)685-0891 with questions.