Government

Though the holiday season is now in full swing, the Chapel Hill 2020 will press forward with the second round of key theme group working sessions Thursday. The meetings will be held at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School on Smith Level Road from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. They promise to follow essentially the same format as the first round of meetings. The key difference is that before breaking off into seperate theme meetings, Town Manager Roger Stancil will give a presentation on the fiscal state of the town.

This semester I have served OrangePolitics as a student intern to complete a minimum 30-hour service-learning requirement for a sociology class entitled “Social and Economic Justice.” The course is a capstone requirement for all social and economic justice minors like myself and has allowed my professor the opportunity to chronicle the development of the Occupy movement over the course of the semester. Admittedly, I am privileged. But, having studied the birth and spread of this movement, I was shocked when a local demonstration against corporate hegemony of the wealthiest Americans (unaffiliated directly with the Occupy Chapel Hill demonstrations) took a dramatic turn a little more than a week ago, as a police tactical team of more than 25 officers arrested eight demonstrators in a vacant Franklin Street building.

In advance of tonight's Council meeting, Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil sent the email below this afternoon to members of the Town Council, Chief of Police Chris Blue and Town of Chapel Hill employees.

Roger and Chief Chris Blue are conducting an internal review of "the events centered on the vacant Yates Motor Company building." Others might more aptly characterized those "events" as "the deployment of an ~ 25 person SWAT Unit to arrest seven people charged with misdemeanor breaking and entering at the Yates Building."

The Council will consider the Petition that I and 77 other cosignatories submitted to the Council. That Petition requests that the Council establish an independent task force to review the events leading to the deployment of the CHPD SWAT team on November 13th, and report back its findings and recommendations to the Council and the public.

The Town Manager's proposal is neither independent nor transparent. The parties conducting the investigation have conflicts of interest, namely their real or perceived bias to protect the image and reputation of the CHPD and the Town of Chapel Hill.