breaking

Um, wow! Reports? 

(Borrowing the name from Jason Baker's comment.)  

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.

As reported by Kirk Ross of the Carrboro Citizen on OP and on the CC site, Chapel Hill Town Councilmember Bill Strom has announced that he will be resigning as of August 1, and will be leaving the area.

The interesting political implication is that I think the Council will now be expected to appoint a replacement since this resignation did not happen within the 40-day window before an election candidate filing period which would have led to an automatic appointment of the 5th vote-getter.