In a recent email to the appointed Community Safety Workgroup, constituent and Minneapolis government watchdog for the rest of us, Chuck Turchick, points out the dangers of pretending to be transparent and open to the public while hiding behind locked doors and password-protected zoom calls…
Dear Community Safety Work Group members,
I am pissed — for three reasons!
First, after I wrote your co-chairs, telling them that since I hadn’t heard back from my previous inquiries, I assumed your meetings were now open to the public, I heard nothing from them. I would be attending the January 12 meeting in person at the Hennepin Theatre Trust and that I expected to be allowed in as a public observer. And NEITHER OF YOUR CO-CHAIRS responded that this meeting had now become a virtual meeting, so I shouldn’t go down to 900 Hennepin. I only found out by other means that the meeting had gone virtual, and your co-chairs had no knowledge that I had found that out.
Second, maybe I shouldn’t feel ignored because I now understand that even the OFFICIAL civilian oversight body in Minneapolis, the Police Conduct Oversight Commission, has reached out to your workgroup several times, and that group too HAS HEARD NOTHING in response.
Third, I would suggest that whoever made the comment at your December 15 meeting that their concern about public meetings “is that it undermines the ability for people to be open and genuine” is not fit to serve on an official Minneapolis advisory body for which public dollars are being expended, and that is charged with making recommendations on police-related issues in the year 2022. On numerous occasions, the lack of transparency on police-related issues has caused problems that far outweigh any “need” for secrecy. And since all of you but one person voted for these absurd rules of public engagement, I believe that just about all of you are unfit to serve on this body.
As a friend of mine has put it: What does that mean that someone can’t be open and genuine if these meetings are public? Does that mean this person will say one thing to the public but something different — possibly even contradictory — in private? That’s the absurdity of such a “concern.”
Everyone nowadays talks about transparency, but just like the weather, no one does anything about it. And that includes you folks. I would bet that none of you voted for Donald Trump — one of you, of course, is not yet of voting age — but you, by meeting in secret, thereby seeming to relish in your elitist “expertise,” are part of the reason Donald Trump was elected in the first place.
You are furthering the dangerous disdain of experts in our society. And not directly, but the attitude your workgroup is exhibiting is precisely what has led to the thousands upon thousands of needless COVID deaths due to the burgeoning distrust of experts in our society. Regrettably, by meeting in secret, you are legitimizing that distrust.
This goes well beyond you.
Yours,
Chuck Turchick
