Empty Glass

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning the Madison City Council did the right thing. It fired interim Police Monitor Aeiramique Glass. Glass harassed a Madison police officer to the extent that she now faces criminal charges for it and she irresponsibly called for the city to be “burned down,” but she was actually fired for failing to lift a finger to do one of the few specific things in her job description, which was to find her replacement.

So, her ouster was a good first step, but now comes the even harder part. Clearly, the best course of action would be to admit that the whole thing was an expensive (to the tune of a half million dollars a year) mistake from the very start. The six-year history of the Monitor and the Police Civilian Oversight Board has been strewn with incompetence and sometimes outrageous behavior. It took the Board over two years to hire the first Monitor and it took that person over a year just to develop a complaint form. Then when she resigned, it took the interim Monitor Glass nearly a year to even get started on hiring her permanent replacement, something she should have been working on from day one. And that just scratches the surface of everything that has gone wrong in this sordid tale. You can get the details here.

I have some hope that improvements will be made. Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway is clearly frustrated with the whole thing. In her previous budget process she at least entertained the idea of abolishing the office and she did succeed in trimming its budget.

And this week the Council endured hours of petulant shouting and toddler melt downs from the angry crowd of misfit toys at its meeting on Tuesday into Wednesday and it still voted 14-6 to do what the mob didn’t want. These gentle, peaceful people were so incensed at the outcome that some Council members needed police escorts just to get out of there and find some breakfast.

And, by the way, let us acknowledge my brother-in-blogging David Blaska who was one of the brave handful who showed up to support the resolution. He was shouted down and verbally abused, but he doesn’t care. It’s our view that David actually enjoys being shouted down and verbally abused. Makes him feel alive. Nonetheless. the guy shows up, which is more than can be said for present company as your host prefers to kibitz from the sidelines.

If the Council cannot bring itself to just chuck the whole thing, then it must realize that it has to recreate it from the ground up. The first thing to do is to make the Monitor a regular city appointment. The Mayor should appoint and the Council approve, just like any management position and there should be a standard five-year contract. The lines of hiring, firing and day-to-day management should be clear and standard practice.

I think it’s a bad idea for the Council to recreate an Oversight Board, but if it must then it should be just another of the 100 or so citizen committees that crowd city government. It could be staffed by the Monitor, but it should have no control over the position. Like all the others, the board should be a mix of citizens and alders appointed by the Mayor and approved by the Council. But whatever its exact makeup, it should be a group of honest, competent and fair-minded people with no axe to grind. The current Board is specifically set up to be filled with anti-police bias.

So, now the glass is empty. My own view is that it should stay that way. But if it must be refilled let’s get it right this time.