>I got the letter too; there is nothing mysterious about it. It came >from Michelle Gross of Communities United Against Police Brutality--I >assumed that she wrote it although I don't see why that matters. It was >addressed to a couple of electronic mailing lists--the one I'm on is a >CUAPB mailing list. > Thanks for clarifying Rosalind. I'm not on CUAPB mailing list. I am familiar with Gross by seeing her on TV. It does matter what organization put the letter out, if the letter was put out by an organization, and it matters if the letter was put out by an individual, who put it out -- it helps me, as a reader make some judgements about how seriously to take the allegations in the letter.
I did go down to City Hall over my lunch hour to check out what was going on there at the rally. It goes without saying I saw a number of fellow Minneapolis Issues folks there. Some of the rhetoric coming from the speakers was rather heated "maybe we are going to start shooting back" for example. Leona Seales spoke and stated that the story about Donald shooting Schmid didn't make sense, and she thought it was a lie that Donald concealed the gun in her buttox, and that also the scenario was probably really that the other police officer shot Schmid rather than Donald. Others stated their anger about how Rybak has handled this issue, and that Rybak was out of town. I saw both Dean Zimmerman and Natalie at the rally observing, as well as Rybak staffers Laura Sether and Peter Wagenius. According to Rybak's staff, Rybak is aware of that allegation about a MPD officer saying "You got one of ours, so now we got one of yours", and that has been reported to internal affairs, and there is currently an investigation into that. I also got more clarification about the email snafoo last week. The current situation is people sending email to the allusers city email alias means that the email goes to all 4400 or so city employees. This is in the process of being changed. So this explains some of the furor, as probably many employees just decided to answer the email -- and hit reply all -- and some probably said some choice things not really intended for the whole city to read. >Both newspapers mentioned the "alleged" police statements in their >coverage of the shooting. From the Pioneer Press story (and as the >letter from Michelle), it sounds as though there are several people who >are willing to go on record as having heard the remarks. > >(See http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/3858226.htm) > >I'm glad these people are willing to speak up. The people who heard the remarks are not on the public record -- though they apparently did make a report to Internal affairs. Rev. Jerry McAffey and Spike Moss are the ones quoted in the Pioneer Press story giving a second hand account of these statements. One speaker (can't remember who) made the best point I've heard from this discussion. It needs to be clear that police officers report to the chief, and through him to the mayor, rather than the way it seems now, that the police officers are reporting to the Police Federation. I think that Rybak's public bungling over trying to get rid of Chief Olson has come back to bit him now. Olson has been totally invisible with all of this, and that really needs to change. Eva Eva Young Near North Minneapolis _______________________________________ 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
