Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Proactive

I'm still pondering this thread on Twitter from HoCo Times reporter Fatimah Waseem:

Key issue in sanctuary debate appears to circle around how a bill that "changes nothing" does so much to compromise safety and funding.

Kittleman said there are no problems in Howard related to local enforcement and undocumented ppl. He doesn't see it as a proactive step.

I ?ed if lack of problem points to fear of reporting issues or inability to reach out to pop. He said immigrant advocates say no prob. exist

If they did, #hocomd will target issues, as in sheriff case. I said issues with sheriff persisted for yrs. He said county was proactive.

Let's look at that last tweet. In reference to the situation with former Sheriff Fitzgerald, the County Executive says that the county's actions were proactive.

Hmm.

Let's look at this post from former Human Rights Commission Chair Genevieve Walker-Lightfoot:

Then there is the issue of our former county sheriff in the summer of 2015 with the complaint alleged by the deputy who filed a human rights violation complaint, among other things, alleging that our former county sheriff routinely made racist, sexist and anti-Semitic remarks. Dr. Sands, the head of the Howard County Office of Human Rights personally contacted me, as the then chair of the Human Rights Commission and adamantly requested that I help her “resolve” the complaint without addressing the matter before the full  Commission, a clear and blatant violation of  Howard County, MD human rights policy and  
procedure for reviewing complaints. I told her that the deputy should have a right to file his complaint with her office, like any other county employee  and that I would not assist her in hiding the matter in violation of not only the deputy’s civil rights, but county law. Not surprisingly, the next month I received a certificate from the county government thanking me for my service, a de facto notice that I was officially not to be reappointed to the Human Rights Commission. 

Proactive? How? Perhaps proactive in preventing this ugly situation from coming out in the open by replacing Ms. Walker-Lightfoot. Trying to squelch justice for those under the Sheriff who were suffering in a misguided attempt to keep it out of the public eye.

No, the response to the problem of Sheriff Fitzgerald was entirely reactive

And that is precisely what Mr. Kittleman is arguing for now in the case of CB-9. "We'll see what happens, then we'll deal with it." How many people will suffer while we figure out how to do this?

The President-Elect has given his own word on numerous occasions indicating how he intends to treat undocumented residents. He has blasted Muslims as inherently dangerous, Mexicans as likely criminals. Are we just going to wait and see what he does?

That is not proactive.

If the approach that the County Executive took in handling former Sheriff Fitzgerald is his go-to example of how to handle really big problems, well, we have a really big problem. 

*****

One more thing: if I have any doubts about whether a commenter is posting under their real name, I will delete them. If they persist, I will block them. Anonymity is not guaranteed here,

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