Citizen's Police Oversight Commission hires Director of Investigations for citizen complaints

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- It's a new, critical role for the Citizen's Police Oversight Commission.

The police watchdog group has hired Jamison Rogers, its first Director of Investigations who will be leading a unit that has subpoena powers to investigate citizen complaints.

It's a new role that was created when Philadelphia City Council established the oversight agency in 2021, replacing the Police Advisory Commission, also known as PAC.

Alongside CPOC's auditing and policy units, the investigative unit is tasked with a building an investigative team to independently look into things like officer misconduct, police-involved shootings and citizen complaints against members of the Philadelphia Police Department.

Rogers, a former Chester City police detective, started in March.

"We are different because we are a civilian agency," he said.

He says there was no investigative capacity at this level before he arrived.

"PAC did have some investigators but again, the amount of authority at the time does not compare to where we're at now," said Rogers.

Rogers says authority would include things like recommending charges and subpoena powers.

"Introducing potential policy changes, and if we see an IAD report that's completed that we feel is missing pieces to it, we can send that back and ask them to take a second look at it," he added.

CPOC has recently had some growing pains, with three of its nine civilian commissioners resigning last month citing a "toxic environment."

However, those resignations don't directly impact the organization's investigations unit that Rogers is currently working to staff.

Rogers says fully staffed would be six to ten investigators and he hopes to fill the positions within the year.