The Denver City Council appointed Dr. Apryl Alexander – a forensic psychologist and Black Lives Matter 5280 activist – to the Citizen Oversight Board, a watchdog for the Office of the Independent Monitor, which oversees the Denver Police and Denver Sheriff Departments.

Alexander was one of 20 vying for the vacancy, according to Emily Lapel, Denver City Council’s legislative policy analyst. Her nomination was approved by the Council in a 12-0 vote on Monday night, with Councilman Chris Hinds absent.

The day Alexander was interviewed for the position was May 28, Denver’s first day of racial justice protests, in which she was teargassed by police just a few hours later. (She is one of several plaintiffs in the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado’s lawsuit against the Denver Police Department for excessive use of force.)

That event, she told Colorado Politics on Monday, underscored the need to find “better ways for policing in our communities that does not include excessive force, that includes accountability, that includes restorative practices.”

Alexander’s goal in her four-year term on the board is to “voice the concerns of the community … that people have been marching and protesting and rallying these last few months just to simply have accountability” around excessive force, police training and police onboarding.

“I hope to be that member to ask these questions about the processes that are currently happening … and provide some more transparency and clarity to the public,” she said.

As a researcher and professor of forensic psychology at the University of Denver, she also wants to help center the focus on evidence-based public policy that helps guide the “thinking of new pathways” toward better policing.

“People are looking for change in this moment,” she said.

The Citizen Oversight Board was created by city ordinance in 2004 as part of the establishment of the Office of the Independent Monitor, which serves as a check on Denver’s law enforcement agencies.

Among the COB’s responsibilities are assessing the effectiveness of the independent monitor and making policy-level recommendations around the Denver Police and Sheriff Department’s discipline, use of force, recruitment, training, complaint process and more. The COB has no investigative authority, however.

In February 2019, the Denver City Council gave the board more bite by changing the appointment process of the COB members, adding two more members to the board as well as provisions to stagger members’ terms.

Prior to the ordinance changes, the mayor was solely responsible for all appointments to the COB. Now, Denver’s mayor and the city council each get four appointees, with one appointee being a “joint decision.”

Alexander’s appointment serves as an “example of why Council’s voice and insight matter to these processes and matter to appointments,” Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca of District 9 said before voting in her favor. “There’s no voice right now more valuable than someone from the movement that is characterizing our experience.”

The list of Citizen Oversight Board members is as follows: