The Common Council Organizational Committee’s agenda yesterday “Discussion of issues surrounding the community and the Madison Police Department” was held. Chief Koval apparently couldn’t be bothered to show up. Neither could any of his supporters.
In brief, members of the public were there to urge the council to do something, and it seems that they know they need to, and they can’t wait for the study to be over. Sounds like they are headed to a council workgroup to work on this as soon as possible. Council President Mike Verveer asked people to get their ideas to him in the next few days, but already he has three volunteers for the committee to look at what the council can do.
Council members are clearly shaken up over the chief’s divisive blog, the beating of Genele Laird and the shooting of Michael Schumacher. And by what might come next. Many spoke of sleepless nights, and haw distraught these events have made them as leaders of the community. They only had an hour and 15 minutes and didn’t make any decisions, but there was a real sense of urgency and a deep knowledge that they have to do something. Sorry there is no time to blog this, but if you want to take a peak, its all here. It’s only an hour and 10 minutes with the first 26-27 minutes being public testimony and the the rest being the council discussion. Those alders there for the majority of the discussion were Barbara McKinney, Maurice Cheeks, Ledell Zellers, Sara Eskrich, Sheri Carter, Mike Verveer, Shiva Bidar, Marsha Rummel, David Ahrens, Denise DeMarb, Rebecca Kemble, Mark Clear and Matt Phair. They were joined later by Larry Palm, Amanda Hall and Samba Baldeh, who may have been showing up for the east side library presentation immediately following this meeting.
(video won’t be available for another 45 minutes after posting this, but I gotta get to work by 8am)
