Established in 1982, the committee is composed of city council members and eight citizen appointees. The committee is not a complaint review mechanism. Instead, it reviews the procedures used during the handling of a complaint. During the committee's first year of work, 17 citizen appeals were heard. The committee made nine recommendations for changes in police complaint processing. It also issued three reports to the general public, detailing the reasons for and nature of the changes requested. However, police and public confusion about the committee's function and frustration among some committee members regarding the committee's progress are problems. Although the relative merits of civilian review boards versus auditing committees are not yet clear, the committee's contribution to improving police-community relations is to show the police where their procedures obstruct the detection of misconduct and implicitly reward misconduct by favoring officers over citizens.