The Native American Commission had a lot to discuss at Monday night's monthly meeting.

But an Independent Citizen, Police Review Board - something they've been working on for a couple years - was the high-light of the evening.

As Tiffany Tarrolly explains, the road to this board, is a bumpy one.

The room oozed with empathy as Wilbert Williams, a recent stabbing victim, shared his story.

"I know the individual who hurt me, they still come around to this day, they harass us, they follow us around, they call my house I know who these people are," Williams said.

He's concerned that Duluth Police are no longer pursuing the June 26th stabbing.

But Duluth Police Chief Gordon Ramsay says the past month has been a busy one, with several stabbings, shootings and robberies.

"And our staffing remains consistent. When we have more of these problems we don't all of a sudden get an extra four or five investigators to help us and we have to balance the cases and sometimes they don't get investigated as quickly as everybody would like. Including me," Chief Ramsay said.

Chief Ramsay and the American Indian Commission say an Independent Citizen Police Review Board is the key to quelling issues like Williams'.

"There needs to be somewhere where a person can go and feel like they can say what they want to say, that it will not be held against them, and that there will be a follow through," said Dr. Bob Powless of the Duluth American Indidan Commission.

"People of the community are part of the solution rather than the problem because I think we can be a big help to the police department, and the whole issue surrounds around trust," said Anthony Ledeaux, the man in charge of the subcommittee for the Independent Citizen Police Review Board.

Chief Ramsay agrees... part of establishing that trust is ensuring everyone is on the same page.

"Everybody has to be involved and it's important that we maintain a relationship that is not adversarial because we all want the same thing and when adversarial nature is introduced to what we're trying to do, we're just gonna spin our wheels," said Chief Ramsay.

The American Indian Commission and Chief Ramsay have similar views about how the board should operate.

"The key elements is how willing the police chief is to make decisions once the independent citizen police review board has passed something on to him.

There was a concern down in the twin cities we had a speaker come up and he said that in the beginning they passed a lot of things on and nobody did anything about it. Well, we don't think that's gonna be like that with Chief Ramsay," Dr. Powless said.