Hints at legal action.
Madison’s independent public monitor is firing back against critics who want her office to comply with city government I.T., procurement, personnel, and open records regulations.
“I will not be silenced. The PCOB will not be dismantled. And this office will not be policed,” Aeiramique Glass declared hours before alders are scheduled to vote on regulations tonight.
In a length statement posted on the city website, Interim Monitor Glass seemed to threaten legal action; she aimed her palpable ire directly at City Attorney Michael Haas.
The City is currently out of compliance with the ordinance governing this office as politics and personal agendas have been and are currently impacting the OIPM’s work and independence. I am placing your office, as the City Attorney, on formal notice of that. …
The Office of the Independent Police Monitor will take the necessary action to address it.
‘Categorically different’ for sure
Glass accused “city leadership and staff” of “orchestrated false statements about this office and its staff. Those false statements were used to mislead the Chief of Police into giving a media interview under false pretenses.”
She called on Police Chief Patterson “to publicly condemn the conduct of City staff who provided false information to produce a response from him.” Issues of mishandling sensitive crime data, she wrote, occurred before she took office but maintained that data analyst Greg Gelembiuk “did nothing wrong. His name is cleared. Fully. He followed office protocol.”
The interim monitor contended that her office Is “categorically different. No other City agency provides independent oversight. This one does. If the entity this office oversees has any visibility into its legal strategy, investigative direction, or operational decisions outside of what I share in collaboration with MPD leadership, and confidential information is learned through shared counsel, then independent oversight does not exist.”
Blaska’s Bottom Line: The easiest way out of this mess is abolish the police monitor and its oversight board and give more visibility to the well established and more impactful Police & Fire Commission.
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