Chris Blue
At the Town Council meeting Monday night, I and many others felt frustrated, after issuing our statements and as the Council was deliberating, unable to respond to or correct the circuitous discussion between council members, Chief Blue, Mr. Stancil, Mayor Kleinschmidt, and Attorney Karpinos.
Two months later, Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil has published his memorandum to the Town Council, outlining his "conclusions, actions and recommendations" related to the occupation of and subsequent police raid at the Yates Motor Company building on W. Franklin St. last November. It's an impressively bland endorsement of paramilitary police action, largely devoid of content. Stancil wastes no time in reaching the conclusion you may have expected him to reach—that the police did everything right and nothing wrong—and that if anything needs to happen as a result of these events, it's that the CHPD should adopt a new media relations policy.
I just sent the following to the Mayor and Town Council of Chapel Hill. It somewhat re-hashes my previous comments here on OP, so I'm not going to front-page it, but wanted it to be on the record.
I was extremely disappointed to see the Town handle the anarchist break-in at the Yates Building so poorly after working so well with the activists at Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro for the past month. What happened last weekend played into every simplistic anarcho-fantasy about jack-booted thugs violently protecting the wealthy. That's not the Chapel Hill we know, but there is a vocal group of residents that now may never believe otherwise.
I'm undecided about Jim Neal's specific proposal for an independent commission to study the events of last weekend. Do we really have to empanel a committee to tell us what almost everyone knows (at least in retrospect), which is that the police action was unnecessarily forceful and overly broad? However, I very much want and need some clearer answers from the Town of Chapel Hill.
![[Chris Blue headshot]](http://townofchapelhill.org/Modules/ShowImage.aspx?imageid=6144)
I just heard that longtime Chapel Hill police officer Chris Blue has been selected as the new chief, as of December 1st. I've known Chris for many years as he used to patrol Northside and really got to know the people and issues there. He's very grounded in Chapel Hill, and although he has a long history with the CHPD I think he's also generally open to new ideas. He's even on Twitter!
While it's disappointing to see the Town continuing the longstanding tradition of white male leadership, I think Chris Blue is emminently qualified and will make a great chief.
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