A City Council member who has urged a blue-ribbon, multijurisdictional review said the mayor's statement was "good" but appeared to fall short of "a public, independent, transparent process."
According to a statement from Rybak's office, the police review "which will focus on the Critical Mass ride, the Media Party, the Liberty Parade and the Rage against the Machine concert" will assess police officers' training prior to the RNC and identify areas for improvement. It will be completed by the end of October.
Minneapolis officials will also cooperate with which that city' mayor recently announced would be conducted by attorneys Andy Luger and Tom Heffelfinger. In addition to the police evaluation, the Minneapolis City Attorney's Office will examine the protocols used for arresting and citing people at the RNC. It will also consult with the Hennepin County courts about the financial burden the RNC's arrests/citations posed, given that the courts didn't receive national security dollars to process them.
Civil Rights staff will make sure that processes for accepting complaints from the public are clearly laid out. A summary of complaints from each of these departments (plus the Office of Risk Management) along with recommendations and other analysis will be presented to city officials by February 2009. Rybak adds that "a six-month review will at least give policy makers a sense of the scope of issues to be addressed."
Furthermore, given the "significant evolution in how the media covers stories and even the basic question of how media is defined we think it valuable to try to develop a model policy for how to work with the media during large crowd events," Rybak said.
The Minnesota Independent contacted the two Minneapolis City Council members who issued to investigate police conduct during the RNC. Council member Gary Schiff was still reading the mayor's announcement, but Cam Gordon had had a quick look at it.
"It's good we have the [mayor's] statement but it doesn't necessarily meet what I'm hoping to get to—the kind of public, independent, transparent process that I would hope for," he said.
"We might benefit from more of an opportunity to have a public hearing and take some public testimony," Gordon added. "It might take Minneapolis and St. Paul working together." He sees as "positive" St. Paul City Council Member Dave Thune's planned "community conversation" hearing.
"The thing that gets me is this sort of a 'National Security event,'" Gordon said.
"What does that mean?" He said if the Super Bowl and baseball's All Star Game now fall into that category, we need policies "to decide if we even want those kinds of events."
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