Annie raises a critical question about the policy and ordinance/charter
provisions in both cities (St. Paul, too) of having the chiefs of the two
public safety offices - police and fire - treated differently from all other
department heads - with so-called "terms certain" - insulated from
accountability to elected officials (therefore, the public) for 6 years at a
crack.
How we got into this predicament - believing that public safety chiefs
should be treated and differently than other municipal department heads - is
a lesson in fear-mongering and how it drives public policy.
On the strength of fears raised over "politicizing the police" (as if they
weren't political already,) a raft of charter provisions were passed in the
1980's granting special status to police and fire chiefs, removing them from
having to report to and serving at the pleasure of the city's chief elected
executive and/or governing body. Terms of office were instituted that
purposely avoid concurrency with those of the elected officials to whom they
should be responsible. It therefore removed them from public accountability
as well, and we're left with buying out contracts or trying to find legal
"cause" to remove them from office as a way of dispensing with their
incompetence or intransigence.
This is the rarely discussed trap the Mayor and Councilmembers find
themselves in every time calls for Olson's removal go out in response to the
killings his officers are accused of or the abuses of their power invoke.
The trick is to determine when Olson's term of office expires, but more
important going back to a system of police and fire accountability by making
the chiefs serve at the will and pleasure of publicly elected officials.
The only way we should accept terms certain in any office is by making the
office elected, and that would be beyond the pale for police and fire
chiefs.
Time for a charter amendment again shifting those office back to public
accountability.
Andy Driscoll
Saint Paul
------
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied
corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of
strength, and bid defiance to the laws of the country."
--- Thomas Jefferson,1816
> From: "Annie Young" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [Mpls] The Buyout
>
> At lunch today with a friend of mine when we talked about getting rid of
> the Police Chief my friend said "they'll never let him go because the city
> with all its financial woes doesn't have $350,000 or more to buy out his
> (the Chief's) contract".
> Don't these little "rumbles" that keep happening with the police and the
> citizens cost at least that much or more not only in real expenses but the
> cost of morale and public relations within the city?
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