Community impact.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Four years after voters approved Eugene's police oversight system, the Civilian Review Board has designated just one incident - an officer's use of a Taser to subdue a protester at a downtown rally last year - as a "community impact case."

Now, the CRB should designate its second impact case: another Taser incident involving the same officer, Judd Warden, who used a stun gun on Sept. 22 to subdue a Chinese college student mistaken for a trespasser in his own apartment.

The review board has a limited role reviewing complaints. The city's Police Commission, which designed the oversight system, and the City Council, which put it on the ballot and wrote the ordinance guiding its operations, decided the board's primary job should be to review closed complaints that already have been adjudicated. That was a wise decision. Giving the board authority to routinely appeal or challenge the department's decisions would have created a quasi-judicial body that would have become enmeshed in labor disputes and created a bureaucratic nightmare.

But the review board's authority increases in community impact cases. The board can make recommendations on the handling of a complaint and identify policy or procedural issues for review. It can determine that the department's review of a complaint is inadequate or incomplete, or that the police chief's adjudication conflicts with evidence, and it can even order that an investigation be reopened.

Community impact designation gives the review board significant power, and that power should be exercised with discretion and only in high profile cases, including those with potential policy ramifications.

The latest Taser incident fits that description. It has attracted strong public interest from both inside and outside the community, including a letter last week from Oregon Congressman David Wu expressing his interest "in a fair and transparent outcome which reflects our nation's broad-based commitment to the preservation of civil liberties."

The Asian Pacific Network of Oregon has expressed similar concerns, and community activists say the incident illustrates police misuse of Tasers. The Police Commission is examining the city's Taser policy, and the City Council, citing controversy over recent Taser incidents, may soon conduct its own review.

The latest Taser incident is a clear and obvious choice for the city's second community impact case.