A lot has been happening in Durham today.
The Raleigh N&O is reporting “Council votes for independent lacrosse probe:”
City Council members in a split vote today conveyed their intent to set up a third-party investigation of the Durham Police Department’s handling of the Duke lacrosse case.WRAL is reporting “Durham Police Chief Wanted Outside Probe of Lacrosse Case:”
But they agreed on little else during a fractious debate where questions flew about just what such a report would achieve, who would conduct it and how much it would cost.
They plan to discuss it again on June 1 after a budget work session.
Police Chief Steve Chalmers said after the council meeting he worked behind the scenes to try to coordinate a third-party review. This was before he issued a report May 11 about the case that many city leaders have said left key unanswered questions.
Chalmers spoke to reporters briefly after the council session, a rare public appearance for the chief.
He said he stood ready to answer questions directly from council members. He said he would have included more information in his report but was told by City Manager Patrick Baker to pare it down to four or five pages. …
Durham's police chief said Thursday that he wanted a third-party review into investigators' handling of the Duke lacrosse case, but City Manger Patrick Baker wanted to go ahead and release an internal report on the matter.I’ll have comments tomorrow.
Chief Steve Chalmers said he also wanted an in-depth detailed report but that Baker told him to keep the report to 4 to 5 pages.
Durham Mayor Bill Bell had called for the review following the May 11 police department report that found no wrongdoing by investigators in the case.
Bell said the report lacked focus and left questions unanswered about the yearlong criminal investigation of rape and sexual assault charges filed against three former lacrosse athletes.
Bell seemed a bit skeptical about Chalmers' claim, wanting to know why that wasn't known when the departmental report was released.
On Thursday, City Council members agreed, voting 6-1 to pursue another review that detailed officers' roles in the case, as well as District Attorney Mike Nifong's.
Councilwoman Diane Cattoti voted against the measure, saying she wasn't against an outside review but she would not vote in favor of one without details and parameters.
Details of that review will be finalized at a June 1 meeting. …
The entire N&O story is here: the WRAL story is here.
3 comments:
Seems to me that mayor bell is getting a whole lot more worried about crimes by his DPD than he was back a few weeks ago before the report was released. I think bell knows discovery of a cover-up is inevitable.
Uh, the city council is worried about what something costs? Since exactly when.
And, I would like to point out - only in Durham would a city council have even waited this long to investigate something like this.
And only in Durham would it be a split vote. I'm guessing a white/black split. Again.
-AC
Seems to me that mayor bell is getting a whole lot more worried about crimes by his DPD than he was back a few weeks ago before the report was released. I think bell knows discovery of a cover-up is inevitable.
I think that the few rational people in Durham city government are starting to realize that the discovery process they will face in the inevitable civil litigation to follow will reveal such a wealth of corruption and violation of due process that the city will be paying damages for decades, much as happened in Wenatchee Washington when a biased police investigator (Bob Perez)framed people in a bogus child sex ring scandal. http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7065
Not only did the town of Wenatchee pay devastating civil damages, well above the limits of their liability policy, but the bleeding has never stopped. To this day all small towns in the state of Washington are paying higher liability premiums due to the history of payouts on this one historical situation.
The city of Durham has dug itself a deep hole over decades of tolerating questionable police procedures and a good-old-boy justice system.
I believe it is about time to pay the piper....
Post a Comment