Police Panel to Perform on Wednesday.
By Jim Conley • Feb 23rd, 2008 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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The panel appointed to review Brookline’s police complaint procedures will stage Act I on Wednesday at 6 PM in the main library’s conference room. On Brookline will be covering the performance and provide the opening night review.
On another note, there’s still no word on a date for Selectman Nancy Daly’s “White Person’s Symposium on Race Relations”. This strikes me as odd because Daly’s colleague, Selectman Jesse Mermell, refused to grant an appeal in the Arthur Conquest matter because the symposium was, to her, the better approach.
So, with no symposium where does that leave Mermell? Same place as always, clueless.
Update: Looks like Town Administrator Richard Kelliher is going to make the performance SRO, as the library’s conference room can barely accommodate 20 people. What with just the panelists and the On Brookline entourage, the room is not big enough. Seriously, I’ve heard that more than a few residents want to attend this meeting and I don’t know where Kelliher is going to put them (I know where he’d like to).
Hopefully, the police won’t need to be called.
Update (2): In a happy coincidence, a “Meet the Press” forum by the Brookline Neighborhood Apologists (BNA) will be held across the street at 7 PM. That will tie up the TAB crew and the Globe’s local correspondent while the police panel performs.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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Re: Update (2)
There is the right under the public meeting law for a civic minded attendee (or two or three) to record this organizational meeting, via audio and/or video (including cameral cell phones), so long as such is not done in a disruptive manner. This can be a Beat the Press moment that might be appropriate for YouTube to reach a broader public than afforded in the site of this meeting.
MISSION STATEMENT
The panel may have a charge from the Selectmen. But what is this charge? Where is it spelled out? Is it limiting on panel members? Or may panel members consider and perhaps adopt a Mission Statement for what they will look into, without requiring the approval of either the Selectmen or Town Administrator Kelliher? To what extent will Lt. Burke and BPD provide materials considered in connection with Lt. Burke’s report on Conquest’s complaint, such as recordings, written statements, notes, etc? Will the panel establish subcommittees, and if so, will subcommittee meetings be subject to the open meeting law? Will panel members make public their CVs so the public may know what their qualifications are? Might some panel members have actual or potential or apparent conflicts of interest with respect to the practicing of their professions, in particular the six (6) members (two-thirds of the membership) who are attorneys?
I realize that this first meeting is an organizational meeting; but it is important that the panel members take due care to make sure the panel’s structure is solid. Hopefully members will not be shy, politically or otherwise, to speak up to explore fully its plans and goals, including proceeding on a timely basis with its meetings. Hopefully at some point members of the public will be permitted to comment at meetings, as experience teaches us that even experts can learn from such comments.
INTERNET RESOURCES FOR PANEL’S CONSIDERATION
are available under the heading “Emerald FullText Article: Civilian oversight, procecedural justice, and … ” at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet;jsessionid=3ED51671B1BB46F887F807E136F8DC1E?Filename=/published/emeraldfulltextarticle/pdf/1810300407_ref.html
four (4) pages listing articles (some as recent as 2006) some of which are readily available to be downloaded. These may be of interest not only to panel members but to visitors to this Blog interested in “procedural justice.”