City's snow job

GREENSBORO, NC -- In response to the Yes!Weekly story on Greensboro Police surveillance (that the City of Greensboro attempted, unsuccessfully, to stop from seeing the light of day by suing for an injunction), the News & Record's Doug Clark wrote an editorial in which he called the events "bizarre and disturbing." He came to this conclusion:

"The City Council must demand a full accounting of police surveillance policies and activities — not about their tracking of criminals but of citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights."

The City Council has remained mum on the matter, but top city staff countered with an opinion piece of their own a few days later. It was authored by the City Manager Denise Turner Roth, Chief of Police Ken Miller and the City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Kahn.

Let's look at the meat of their response and expose it for the snow job it is, shall we?

"[Doug Clark's] editorial suggests police investigative practices are suspect and in need of oversight. Actually, multiple mechanisms exist to ensure high integrity of criminal and internal investigative processes"

They write "multiple mechanisms" but identify only two. Let's take the second one first.

"The department also conducts a community survey to receive feedback critical to the calibration of its performance."

This survey, conducted by telephone of 401 people in May of 2011, asked people their impressions of the GPD (see it here). Sure, it's not unimportant to sample the community's impressions, but this doesn't address surveillance policies or activities at all. Surveillance isn't even mentioned once. Although city staff put forth this survey as germane, it is irrelevant—a red herring. It doesn't address surveillance.

The other of the two "multiple mechanisms" the city's top dogs describe like this:

"[T]he department is nationally accredited since 1985 and earned special recognition in 2011. This process examines and validates the effectiveness of all policies, standards and practices. It produces and publicly shares an annual report that describes all facets of how the department polices itself, including an analysis of data to inform revisions to policy, procedure and training."

There is only one of these reports, from 2011 (see it here). Despite the claims of city staff, it does not examine or validate the effectiveness of "all" policies, standards and practices. It does not address surveillance activities or policies, the very issue under discussion.

The vast majority of this report covers how the police department handles complaints against the police. It also offers some interesting statistics about the frequency of police use of force, use of weapons and vehicle pursuits, but surveillance? No. The word "surveillance" is only even mentioned once, as a category of reason for use of force. The report does not address surveillance policy or activities. It's just not there. This is another red herring.

So of the two mechanisms the City Manager, Attorney and Police Chief held up to the citizens of Greensboro to reassure us that police surveillance activities and policies are on the up and up, neither addresses police surveillance activities or policies.

I don't know if the writers missed the point of the editorial to which they were responding or if they intentionally set about to placate people by citing irrelevant reports. Either way, the fact remains, the City has not come forth with an accounting of the city's surveillance policies and activities that Clark and recent events rightly demand. A snow job by the City's top staff in response is even more reason for City Council to take the reins.