Us vs. Them.
By Jim Conley • Feb 5th, 2008 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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What’s going on with the Brookline Selectmen’s blue ribbon committee panel of experts to advise them on police review procedures? Beats me.
I thought that panel members were going to be interviewed at tonight’s meeting. But according to Town Administrator Richard Kelliher, there’s no need for that because the selectmen heard the list of experts he has assembled and then spoke approvingly of them at a previous meeting.
Wow. Massachusetts’ “best run municipality” (the town hall slogan) features an executive board that turns over the process of advising them on a policy affecting residents to a Boston resident who (with any luck) won’t be around to bear the fruits of his team’s incompetence when it ripens. And then the first public appearance of the experts will be when they make their report.
That aside, it sure seems like a snub to those residents who may actually be qualified to advise the selectmen on police policy (as opposed to housing discrimination and employment law) that they seemingly never got a call from Our Richard.
A sham by any other name still smells…
An aside: What’s happened to Nancy Daly’s “White Person’s Symposium on Race” which was to be scheduled for this month? You know, the one that Selectman Jesse Mermell thought was so important that she didn’t need to hear about a police officer’s actions against a black resident? I haven’t heard a thing.
Update: Apparently, the panelists will appear this evening to make statements of some sort to the selectmen. Jaysis.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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Does this mean no CVs of the panel members as public records? Does the lack of process serve as a taint on panel members that they are willing to accept? In lieu of a Blue Ribbon Panel what are we getting? Perhaps in protest, we should
“TIE A YELLOW RIBBON ‘ROUND AN OLD OAK TREE”