The Smoking Gun website reports that twenty year old Heidi Dalibor was arrested, handcuffed, and photographed for a mug shot because she had two long overdue books from the Grafton, Wisconsin library.

It’s nearly funny until you consider that arrest over two library books is an absurd waste of police time and effort.

A serious department would be embarrassed to undertake that effort, but at least one person wastefully and ignorantly assumed that it was a good idea.

Ms. Dalibor’s story and agreeable mug shot are available at

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/
years/2008/0821081books1.html

5. Why not televise? Months ago, I came out against televised PFC meetings, on the theory that television would inhibit complaints. It was a faint hope.

Candidly, it’s the reputation of leadership that makes reliance on any supposedly confidential process dubious.

I’ll ask a question: Have police leaders ever sat in on citizen-commissioner interviews of police candidates? If even those interviews have not been confidential to citizen-commissioners, then a complaints process in that forum would be unreliable.

Go ahead and show the community the public workings of the PFC public meetings as other commissions routinely and confidently do.

4. Why so few meetings? If one looks at the schedule of PFC meetings, they meet regularly – if they do – only quarterly.

Many other Commissions meet more frequently. Is their work more important?

Notes from one meeting are not approved until the next – an entire season goes by before they are approved.

On the bright side, the PFC agenda does have a colorful new logo.

The agenda is available at

http://www.ci.whitewater.wi.us/Your_Government/Agendas/policefcagenda.html

3. City Manager’s Oversight? Our small city has a council-manager form of government, and the appointed city manager is Kevin Brunner.

On the City of Whitewater website, the city lists the dozens of functions of the city manager. Among that number one sees that he claims oversight of the Police and Fire Commission.

Should that be so, one would expect that he would assure that the PFC meets the same notice and procedural standards as, for example, commissions whose meetings are actually listed in the local paper.

Why the exception? Why so long – four years of the current administration – without consistency now?

2. Notice. Does the Register not publish a notice for the PFC the way it does for other committees? If the notice were faxed on 8/8, as it says, why does it not appear with other legal notices in the Register’s 8/14 issue for meetings the week of 8/20?

The Common Council and Planning Commission notices appear – do PFC members not care as much about public notice as members of those other public bodies?

Other commissions often have two weeks’ notice – do their members care more about notice?

Surely our PFC should meet the same standard as other commissions, not a lesser one.

Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission will meet tonight. Here’s the first of some quick questions.

1. Who prepares the agenda? By Wisconsin statute, the PFC oversees the police department, not the other way around. One who drafts a meeting agenda typically controls the meeting.

The current PFC agenda, like others before it, says that it was “Sent to PFC members.” They should be sending it to the Municipal Building – did this agenda and those before it come from the department, not citizens?

It’s easy to say that it’s drafted by citizens, but sent by the city. The agendas are so alike a common municipal draftsman is more probable.