BRATTLEBORO — I find several reasons to take issue with Kurt Daims's piece. I question both its premises and its conclusions.
Specifically, the idea that one should adopt a 224-page report and its 41 recommendations without examining the details included within, how the information was gathered, and each recommendation individually is clearly incorrect. The Community Safety Review Committee and its two facilitators did a tremendous amount of work in a short period of time, and their work deserves a close look, not just a blanket endorsement.
Upon looking closer, one will see that the committee's process was not intended to represent the views of Brattleboro as a whole. Its work was deliberately centered on a subgroup of people who were identified as being “the most impacted” by law enforcement agencies. Other groups were given lower priority.
In the process, safety itself was never defined. In gathering the data, people's feelings were considered paramount, rather than whether they were actually safe or unsafe, or even what those words might mean.
And the details behind their feelings were obscured by the perceived need for confidentiality in reporting any actual events, so for the most part readers of the report don't know what actually happened. The committee and the facilitators had reasons for doing things this way, but the fact remains that the results and the report were slanted in a particular direction.
Moreover, the idea that the process put in place by the Selectboard has been “undemocratic” is also incorrect.
Mr. Daims may question the decisions they made, but the Selectboard is elected by the voters of Brattleboro specifically to make such decisions. What they did is, in fact, democracy in action. If the voters don't like it, the members of the board can be democratically removed from office on Election Day.
I believe there are a number of ways that problems in law enforcement, child protective services, and mental health services can and should be improved. In my view, these improvements will require more money and resources, not less. Others disagree.
How to approach the specific questions and proposed solutions is what we are now facing, democratically, and everyone in town has the right to a voice in the decisions being made.