Detroit Board of Police Commissioners backs Chief Todd Bettison amid OIG investigation

The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners voted Thursday to express confidence in Chief Todd Bettison. The vote came while Bettison remains under investigation by the Office of Inspector General after he asked an activist to remove old photos of now-Mayor Mary Sheffield with a former boyfriend.

"We didn't vote for him to be the chief. We voted to say that we have full confidence in the chief. Those are two different things," said Police Commissioner Darryl Woods.

While Woods made the motion, Commissioner Victoria Camille was the only member to abstain. She says the board's job requires it to remain independent of the police department and appear so.

"When there's an active investigation, you don't want to get ahead of that and give the perception that we already have a determination in our minds about where that's going to go," said Camille.

Camille says the board had already recommended Bettison stay on as police chief at the start of Sheffield's term, after his original appointment during the Duggan administration. Because of that, she believes there was no new action the board needed to take.

"There's nothing, in my opinion, that needs to be acted on immediately, and that it would be appropriate to just wait for the findings to come back for us to review those findings," said Camille.

Woods says the vote was about the chief's record, not the inspector general's investigation.

"Well, there's an OIG investigation that they sent that to, and they're going to do their job. We're not trying to chime in on that," said Woods.

CBS News Detroit reached out to Bettison for an interview, but his office told us he was not available on Friday and directed us to the Board of Police Commissioners.

The inspector general's investigation remains open.