Bryn Lovejoy-Grinnell, pictured second from the left at a recent Citizen Review Board Meeting, resigned as chair of the board. The CRB has experienced a year of tumult. Credit: Courtesy of the City of Syracuse

Citizen Review Board Chair Bryn Loveyjoy-Grinnell and new appointee Josh Carroll have resigned from Syracuse’s police oversight board, both wrote in letters addressed to the city clerk.

Lovejoy-Grinnell also emailed her resignation letter to Central Current at 8 a.m. She did not respond to a Central Current reporter’s request for further comment.

She briefly detailed in her resignation letter issues she saw between city officials, councilors and the CRB.

Central Current obtained a copy of Carroll’s resignation.

“The City and the Council do not currently provide the CRB with the resources, support, and independence it requires to be successful, and I hope that that will improve in the future,” Lovejoy-Grinnell wrote.

Lovejoy-Grinnell is the second board chair to leave the board in the last five months. Former chair Lori Nilsson’s term expired at the end of 2024.

Carroll joined the board at the start of the year. In his letter, he described how his initial CRB experiences were disillusioning, and accused the board of asking “illegal questions” of potential employees during interviews.

He wrote that the CRB has faced “opposition and obstruction” from the Common Council and that the board has been “demonstrably dysfunctional.”

“I no longer have faith that an effective system can be built to sustain an effective review board,” Carroll wrote.

Appointed in January 2023, Lovejoy-Grinnell is one of only two CRB members with experience on the board.

She became the chair of the beleaguered board earlier this year. She ultimately oversaw just three meetings of the board.

Lovejoy-Grinnell’s resignation continues more than a year of tumult for the CRB. It currently has no administrator.

By September 2024, all of the office’s employees had resigned or found other work. Former administrator Ranette Releford also resigned. One employee in their resignation letter accused Releford of running a hostile work environment and doing little work.

The office struggled to file yearly reports or finish investigations into alleged misconduct.

These struggles, paired with the aftermath of Releford and her employees’ departures, prompted several failed efforts from the Common Council to take greater control over the board.

The Council may vote on the latest of those efforts Monday afternoon. Councilor Chol Majok, who chairs the council’s Public Safety committee, hopes to create a ‘legislative advisory committee’ to overhaul the board’s legislation.

Lovejoy-Grinnell wrote a letter opposing that action, and other former CRB members and local advocates have advised against creating a temporary legislative body such as that. Majok’s proposed committee was on the council’s last voting agenda, but Majok held that item from a vote on March 31.

Majok did not return a call from Central Current about the resignations.

The council last year tried to assume more oversight, such as hiring and firing the CRB’s administrator. Mayor Ben Walsh vetoed that legislation after the council approved it.

Editor’s note: “Bylaws” was changed to “legislation” in the fourth to last paragraph of this story. The proposed legislative advisory committee would look to strengthen the Citizen Review Board’s legislation, not its bylaws. Central Current regrets this error.

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...