WM: Jonathan, you and I both know that whether the question is the chief of police or whether to celebrate national pickle day there are agendas lurking in the corners.
This is kind of the problem, the question before them is: Is William McManus capable and right for the job of Police Chief, will you confirm the nomination made by the Mayor? Nothing else is on the table or should be on the table.
But to wait until the top six have been vetted and one person has been nominated and then make arguments about how wrong this is and that it should be another personWM: For myself, I'm not saying it should be another person, only that I would have prefered that it be Lubinski. This area of the city has a good relationship with Lubinski but we don't know McManus from Adam's off ox. I agree that the arguments should have been made when the committee sat down to look at resumes.
The argument cannot be put forth that Lubinski and Gerold are just as qualified and experienced as McManus and then backpedalled on.WM: The decisions concerning ISAG were made when Lubinski was either still a lieutenant or she may have, by then, become the inspector of the downtown command. The decision to accept Seattle PD's conclusions about who would show up for the ISAG conference and what they would do was not one made with any lieutenant's or inspector's say so. It was chief and maybe deputy chiefs who made that decision. Therein lay the initial mistake.
People have extolled how much both Gerold and Lubinski can be attributed success for their work on community mediation, racial profiling, lowering crime rate, etc. It contradicts that to say then that things don't happen at their level, or they've only been on the job a short while.WM: You're right to say I was unclear here. They did have the power to change some things in some places. They did not have the power over the department as a whole. Personally, I'm leery of using the crime rate to judge anyone. The crime rate has more to do with the economy than it does with the police department.
And while Lubinski comes closer in years of experienced, he far outweighs her in years of command experience and responsibility. This isn't about who you like, it's about the bottom line fact of experience.WM: Not just experience, but the kind of experience. What do you weight in McManus' experience against what Lubinski knows about the city? How do you weigh Lubinski being a minority person against LcManus living with a minority person? The whole purpose of affirmative action, I think, is about weighing the experience of minority people against white males, knowing that the institutionalizing of privilege means that the privileged person will always have been promoted first, mentored first, etc. It also means knowing that the minority person will have been held back, blocked, and thwarted at many junctures.
I will have to change my statement about the city council. Yesterday, when I wrote it, I was under the impression that seven CMs were opposed to McManus and willing to fight tooth and nail. Come to find out last night that it is not so solid a wall. I'd be more inclined today to say that McManus will be approved and that will be the end of it. I certainly hope that he will be approved.
WizardMarks, Central ________________________________
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