Citizens Advisory Council member discusses review

Citizens Advisory Council member discusses review

You're taking a live look at city hall in downtown huntsville.

It's the site of a scheduled protest tomorrow that begins at 5.

That's 30 minutes before the huntsville city council meeting is scheduled to begin in the same building.

With plenty of attention on police conduct - the council is preparing to introduce a resolution tomorrow that calls for a review of last week's protests.

That review will be conducted by the huntsville police citizens advisory council.

Thank you for joining us tonight -- i'm dan shaffer.

And i'm najahe sherman.

We want to get straight to waay 31's will robinson-smith.

He spoke with one of the founding council members about what the group will do over the next several weeks.

Will..

The work already is getting started just tonight, the council was in an executive meeting with huntsville police to start some elements of that process.

Members are not able to discuss details of that meeting, but say they look forward crafting their report.

David little, member, huntsville police citizens advisory council well, we've been really fortunate to have a real proactive police department.

So there's been more of them coming to us for advice, than us saying you need to do this.

David little has served on the huntsville police citizens advisory council since it formed back in 2010 in response to a use-of-force incident.

Two of the biggest areas where they've advocated change were for body cameras and tasers.

They were not used until about three years ago.

And body-worn cameras.

The big concern with that was privacy, but also the expense and how do they store all the data.

After the protests last week, little says huntsville police also want to evaluate and determine if there are ways they can improve on how they responded.

They are always looking to improve.

They are continually training.

If they need to modify a policy, you know, maybe something happened and they discovered that a police officer acted within policy, but they say, you know what, we may need to change something.

They're always doing that.

We talked about that very thing in there, that the police department is always wanting to improve.

As for the national conversation, little says so far they haven't heard any local calls to reallocate funds from police to other city services.

Huntsville needs a lot more cops.

We're growing.

We don't have enough.

But we have a good city and we're fortunate and our police department does a great job.

So if somebody brings that before us, we'll be glad to sit down and listen, i can tell you that.

The council will be called on to review the events leading up to and during the event.

To do that, they will conduct a series of interviews and review footage, both from police and protesters.

They will then submit a report of recommendation s by mid-august.

Reporting live in huntsville, will robinson-smith, waay 31 news.