An Open Letter to the
Closed Meetings
by Mary Moore, June 2007
On Sunday, June 3, a group of community activists from Sonoma County met with five members of three of the families who recently lost loved ones to killings by local law enforcement. While the stories differed in many ways the common theme was that the details of these killings as described by the family members were very different than the initial reporting by the Press Democrat who gets their information from law enforcement sources. In fairness to Jeremy Hay, a P.D. reporter who has been heavily edited before his stories run, he has tried to get the truth out there. The Press Dem has also refused to run the many letters of outrage they have received since the killings claiming that they were all too similar. This lack of fair coverage was just one of the issues taken up by the twenty people gathered to hear the families stories and to brainstorm the best way to support them.
But the point I want to address in this writing is about the “Community Meetings” called by local elected officials to “address concerns” after the killing of Haki Thurston, Jeremiah Chass, Richard DeSantis, Walter Heller and Luiz Sanchez in less than eight weeks. For many of us this spate of killings by law enforcement in Sonoma County took us back ten years to another time when a similar spate of killings caused the community to insist that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights come here and conduct special hearings on police abuse. The report that ensued (published in 2000) contained recommendations that if implemented could have prevented some if not all of the recent killings. But instead, law enforcement circled the wagons, and waited out the storm of community indignation. Nothing changed but for awhile the killings stopped. Today much needed trainings and real oversight remain mere suggestions.
Now in 2007 with a whole new set of law enforcement chiefs, District Attorney and elected enablers. special closed meetings are happening with carefully selected members of the community. There is NO representation from the affected families, NO Latinos or Indians and NO activists who were involved ten years ago, so no historical memory. It is as if those killings a decade ago, the Commission hearings and report never happened. After the first “community meeting” without the community, Rev. Curtis Byrd of the NAACP was quoted as objecting to the closed aspect yet nothing changed and they are continuing with only the politicians and chiefs hand picked people. Fortunately some of the chosen have integrity and have continued to point out the necessity of opening up these meetings. At the least this select group of “leaders” should have to hear what the families have to say about how their loved ones died. And more to the point, dates should be set immediately for open forums for all of the community to participate and ask questions.
Between the unwillingness of the main newspaper in Sonoma County to publish the many passionate letters they received on this subject or to report both sides of these murders and the unwillingness of local public servants to meet with all of us and to hear all sides, we find ourselves encountering the perfect storm to keep all this quiet and buried. Fortunately for those of us who care about basic justice, there is hope coming from outside Sonoma County. Last Thursday night KGO’s Gene Burns devoted a whole hour examining our problem with law enforcement and their enablers. He started out wondering why none of the families had received the official police reports about their loved ones death. He said that they had tried all of Thursday to find out from the official sources why the reports were being delayed and that he was stonewalled by everyone he contacted.
We are not surprised. We can relate. Open up the newspaper to public dialogue and open up your closed meetings to all of the people.
Mary Moore 874 2248