The resignations apparently were prompted in part by the police chief's failure to abide by some of the board's recommendations and by the city's recent probe into who "leaked" a board decision to a newspaper reporter.

Combined with vacancies from last fall that have not been filled, the resignations leave the 14-member board with just six voting members, hobbling the board's ability to investigate citizen complaints against police officers.

The issues surrounding the resignations also raise questions about the credibility of what has been called the only independent police civilian review board in the state.

Dan Levin, a political science professor at the University of Utah who had served as chairman of the review board, resigned Monday, saying in a letter to Mayor Rocky Anderson that he has found other ways to practice his interest in civil rights and liberties.

Susan Webster, president of SCW Group Communications and the review board's vice chairwoman, resigned Wednesday. Her letter cited "changing priorities in my life."

A third board member, Nafitalai Unga Kioa, a U.S. Postal Service employee, said he plans to resign Monday.

Kioa expressed disenchantment with the leak investigation and the police chief's refusal to accept many of the board's recommendations.

"There are some things in there that are mind-boggling, that you don't want to see a police department getting involved in," Kioa said.

The board's investigators sometimes cannot get access to police records they need to fulfill their duties, he said.

"We were running up against a wall to get certain files in cases," Kioa said.

Anderson's spokesman, Patrick Thronson, declined to comment on the allegations, noting there is no indication of protest in the resignation letters. He also defended the city's probe into the news leak.

Police Chief Chris Burbank also declined to discuss the resignations.

Levin and Webster could not be reached for comment Friday, but board member Scott McCoy said his colleagues' resignations were prompted largely by decisions by Burbank and Anderson to investigate who disclosed to a Salt Lake Tribune reporter that the board sustained allegations of excessive force against police officers who confronted an unarmed man at Liberty Park.

"Their resignations can be characterized as protest resignations," McCoy said. "We don't appreciate having our names dragged through the mud in the leak investigation when we had nothing to do with it."

That probe - conducted by a private investigator hired by the city - included a request for the board members' personal phone records and a threat of prosecution for the offender.

The review board, Kioa said, "has been tarnished by accusations of the criminal investigation involving who leaked what to the media."

McCoy, who is also a state senator, agreed. "No one from the board leaked anything to anyone, yet everyone seemed to be pointing fingers at us and impugning our professionalism and our integrity."

The mayor, the police department and the police union, which called for an investigation of the leak, overreacted and handled the situation poorly, McCoy said. The leak occurred just days before the board's quarterly report would have revealed the outcome anyway, he said.

McCoy said board members felt abandoned during the investigation, which failed to find the source of the leak.

The mayor's office ''just kind of left us out there hanging. . . . The police union accused us of illegal leaks and illegal activity when they had no idea what they were talking about.''

Thronson said the leak investigation was important to maintaining the integrity of the police disciplinary process.

"An essential component of the integrity of this process is that police officers accused have the opportunity to defend themselves before [civilian review board] reports or internal affairs reports become public," Thronson said.

The mayor's spokesman also defended the review board as an "effective, independent" oversight panel.

"The process," Thronson said, "has proven to be extremely effective and fair in holding police officers and the police department accountable to the community and also preventing false and frivolous accusations from damaging reputations of the police officers."

McCoy said the recent problems will put the board's work on hold, and Kioa said volunteers are not applying for the vacancies.

But Thronson said the mayor is committed to filling the board with "people committed to the process and integrity of the board."

ncarlisle@sltrib.com,

israel@sltrib.com

The Police Civilian Review Board

* Created in 1993 by then-Police Chief Ruben Ortega.

* Reformed in 1998 by the Salt Lake City Council.

* Expanded and made more independent in 2002 by new Mayor Rocky Anderson, a longtime critic of the Police Department.

* Is charged with reviewing complaints, such as use of excessive force, against police officers and forwarding recommendations to the police chief.

* Has investigated, since 2003, 230 allegations and sustained about 46 percent of them.

* Has sustained about 10 percent of the 80 complaints of excessive force investigated since 2003.