I listened to the PCOB meeting tonight. Credit to WORT WKOW for also being in the meeting.
This board literally doesn’t understand what the ordinance that creates and governs their board and the IPM actually does. Like, at the most basic level.
It feels like the board simply does not understand that their roles and power are defined by, and derived from, the power of the city council and our elected officials. Some seem to believe they’re the victims in all of this, which seems to just underscore the disconnect from reality they’re marinating in.
It’s clear that some members of the board resent being subject to the authority of the common council, and thus, us as citizen and voters in the city. Some seem to think it’s only real independence if they are outside of the authority of any element of the city government…
A few of them seem to not even understand what the role of the city attorney is, as though he’s the Mayors personal attorney. Alder Glenn, the city council VP, essentially just crapped all over the city attorney and completely mischaracterized the relationship between the PCOB and the city. She also insisted that another unnamed lawyer, who (paraphrasing) knows the ordinance really well (trust me bro) disagrees with the city attorney, hence the need for independent legal council for the PCOB.
Credit to the city attorney for keeping his calm, because this feels like an unfunny episode of parks and rec. The questions from the board are all over the place. He had to spend 10 minutes explaining what it means for the board to be independent in the most basic sense. It wasn’t well received.
One of the board members seems to take issue with the idea that the city council has the right to terminate the monitors job at all.
It’s like they don’t understand the very basic concepts of government and civics and the entire concept of representative democracy, which seems important if you’re going to be part of said system.
We had more competent officers in my 4-H club than this.
The board itself exists to hire and oversee the IPM, they themselves are not outside of the accountability of the city council, they are agents of it! They are not the ones who define the role or requirements of the IPM are, they exist to hire the IPM role to execute the position defined in the ordinance. This shit is wild.
And what’s really damning here is that multiple board members seem to be too busy attending to their pets diets and children to keep their attention on the meeting itself.
Unserious clowns, the lot of them. They don’t care about protecting civil rights and mitigating police abuse of authority. They seem a whole lot more interested in hearing themselves speak, self-congratulating, excusing Glass, rejecting the notion of acting with the statute that defines their job, and virtue signaling (looking at you Helyn Luisi-Mills, for the record).
And if I know this city, the result of this will be more inaction and a demand to modify the ordinances so that the board gets their own legal council and more budget so they can argue against the the authority of the city council over the PCOB. To that end, Alex Saloutos, a public commentator, showed a draft resolution he wrote asking the common council to spend $41k so the board can hire itself an independent lawyer for the board. To what end? They are an arm of the city and the common council, why do they think they need their own lawyer to give them an opinion other the city attorneys, aka a lawyer that represents their interests already? They seem to think that they need an external lawyer to read the statute the city council passed to see if the city council has the authority to fire the IPM? Great use of tax payer resources.
As someone who generally feels ACAB is usually the correct answer when there’s conflict between the public and cops, this is making me think the best option is to just dissolve the PCOB and start over. After this meeting, I don’t trust these people to pick an ice cream flavor, let alone the next IPM. Disgraceful.
We need to start yelling at our common council members to take this seriously and act. We are not some quaint little
College town. We’re a real city with real challenges. We needed a functioning PCOB and IPM this summer when Ruiz was executed, and due to navel gazing and grift we still don’t have one. Well done, everyone.
