The Macomb Chief of Police (like the McDonough County Sheriff) has apparently learned how to evade public awareness & accountability…they just refuse to talk to our journalists on the record.
That kind of disrespect for the public they are sworn to serve and protect, combined with a lack of transparency, is how we got to where we are in this community.
Show some guts, guys, or step down if you aren’t up to the job of taking journalist’s questions. That’s a basic function of the job. Leaders of police departments have NO RIGHT to deprive the public of their responses to journalist’s questions about your own job performance and actions while representing us taxpayers. We don’t know why these Republican leaders think they are above basic accountability and transparency.
As for Mayor Inman, we have a meeting tomorrow with the Mayor and City Councilwoman Gayle Carper.
Despite our request for her to be included, Macomb’s first Black Woman Alderwoman-at-Large was excluded from both the meeting tomorrow, and whatever they are planning to show us. This continuing marginalization of Alderwoman Tammie Leigh Brown-Edward’s voice deprives us of her expertise, perspective, and cultural input.
We sincerely hope Mayor Inman will stop excluding Alderwoman Brown-Edwards from such important discussions in the future. Keeping our one Black elected city official out of the meetings and discussions for the remedies for our city’s challenges isn’t ok. Nor is listing her presence at the “Community Conversations” in an official response to the paper instead of asking her for her actual thoughts and statement.
It’s as if they sought to imply that her mere presence at the Community Conversations legitimized them – without soliciting and allowing her opinion about them to be heard and inform our dialog. This appears to be yet more convenient optics, instead of real racial justice in action. This is unconscionable given our city’s racial challenges.
We’ve posted another affidavit about community members trying to get Macomb Police Chief Barker’s attention on his department’s issues with race, class, and lack of cultural competency, from 2016. We’ll keep posting them as needed so the public can see all the many years community members have been trying to get our city leadership’s attention to these issues, without any measurable progress.