City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake introduced a resolution on Monday calling for more police accountability in police shooting investigations. She referenced a new initiative by the Chicago Police Department -- through the city's Independent Police Review Authority -- that puts final reports about police shootings online, complete with statements from witnesses and officers (though names are withheld).

I hope Baltimore police take this seriously as they revise their policy on withholding names of officers who discharge their weapons. One of their central arguments in defending these new rules is that the department does a thorough investigation. That is true, but it's also true that there is no mechinism to tell the public the result. It's a two-tier review -- the State's Attorney's Office reviews the case to determine if a crime is committed. When they are done, the department begings an internal review to determine if the shooting was in policy or out of policy.

This can take weeks if not months. But here in Baltimore, the results almost always fall into a void. What Chicago has done is put it all out there, and I think it helps the department. Since most of the shootings are ruled justified (and aren't criminal) at the very least sharing the report with the public shows them just how thorough the investigation was, and that will go a long way toward eliminating doubt.

But it shouldn't be a compromise. The names of the police officers should be released shortly after they discharge their weapons, within 24 to 48 hours, to ensure there is accountability on the front-end as well. The city already has in place some mechinisms to ensure public scrutiny of police, but like the Civilian Review Board, they are painfully wanting. The CRB, established 10 years ago, discusses cases in such cryptic form that it's next to impossible for anyone sitting in the room to discern what they are talking about. And their semiannual reports do not say whether the police commissioner even took their advice.

Rawlings-Blake, in her resolution, also points out that the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington publishes lives crime statistics on its website; she has proposed setting a up a system in which city police text people crime updates. And police now have a Facebook page and are twittering some breaking crimes on-line.

These are all steps in the right direction. Here's Rawlings-Blake's idea: