J. Kushner: > > A civilian monitoring system with greater power and broader > > authority and more in touch with the community would help > > mold a police force that could do more with less.
W. Cygan: > The absolute last thing that the Police Department needs (IMHO) is to > try and be equally accountable to more than one authority. It is a > nightmare. <snip> > Giving a civilian monitoring authority more power, I believe, would turn out > badly. R. Nelson: And I suspect that the reason we haven't seen a fatal police shooting in the past six months is because of the threat of lawsuits over shootings in 2000 and early 2001. <snip> Of course, we've had an _ineffective_ civilian monitoring agency in place for a long time. It's not a simple matter to make it effective. [TB] Having a civilian monitoring agency falls along the line with having a civilian in charge of the Defense Department. There is a long history of both military and police agencies abusing their powers and authority. While it might be better to put a civilian in charge of the department, MN law requires that a Chief of Police be a licensed police officer. When an agency is mistrusted as much by many members of the community as the Police Department there needs to be a mechanism in place for outside review. If the police had nothing to worry about, we'd here them saying "come on in, review everything" but instead we see objection to any kind of outside review. What do they have to hide? Clearly the lawsuits against the Police Department and in some cases resulting settlements indicate that there are some problems. True, those that get the *%^$ kicked out of them by the cops have done something wrong to get themselves in that situation, that does not give the police license to do unnecessary physical harm. A couple of years ago MPD built their version of the Berlin Wall within view of my living room window. One of the bigger overreactions to an event this city has seen. It costs us a lot of money every time they overreact, money that could better be used somewhere else. I had thought we established the Review Authority by Charter Amendment (but maybe my memory is failing). How do we then discontinue it by just cutting off the money? If the feeling is we don't need both the department's Internal Affairs Unit and Civilian Review many would be more comfortable with eliminating Internal Affairs and keeping Civilian Review. I haven't studied the entire Minneapolis budget but Civilian Review certainly wouldn't be in my top 5 list of cuts. Terrell Brown Loring Park terrell@terrellbrown .org http://www.startribune.com/stories/468/1616359.html A bill introduced Monday in the Minnesota House would put bin Laden's image on a state lottery scratch-off ticket. Players would discover any winnings by scratching off ``and thus obliterating,'' as the bill notes, bin Laden's face. Sixty percent of the proceeds - the maximum allowed under the state Constitution - would go to anti-terrorism efforts. The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Rich Stanek, is a Minneapolis police officer. _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
