On Sept. 9, the coalition presented several demands to the City Council and succeeded in placing those demands on the Council agenda for debate and response the following week.

Those demands included:

* We call upon the City Manager to fire the Police Chief or to admit he is incapable of managing the city and to resign.

* The racist and brutal police behavior that we find objectionable and reprehensive is typified by police officers like Burns, Hallice, DeLuca, McCarthy, Boyle, Loder, and Hussey. These officers should be removed from the city payroll for cause.

* Captain Cusack, as head of the Bureau of Internal Affairs, is responsible for investigating charges of police misconduct. Seventy cases have passed across his desk within the last year. Yet not a single police officer has been disciplined. Captain Cusack should be removed for cause.

* The City Council should empower a public citizens' investigative unit--whose members would be named by the Coalition to Combat Racism--to look into the practices of the Police Department. This Citizens' Investigative Unit would have full powers in order to make it effective and capable of delivering the kind of report and recommendations that will deal with the question of racism and brutality in the Cambridge Police Department.

The following Monday, the Coalition and its supporters were treated to a weird show as council members alternately reflected, whined, pontificated and obfuscated the issue concerning the Coalition's new demand that the hearing and debate of the demands presented the previous week take place at the Martin Luther King School so that the community might listen and participate.

The final answer, as might be expected, was negative.

On Monday, Sept. 23, the Coalition returned to the Council for a hearing and debate of its demands. The Council was packed with community residents. In an opening statement from the Coalition, the Council was told that: "The fact of our presence here tonight points up and concretizes the failure of city government in Cambridge."

The statement went on to declare that "as inflation continues and prices rise even higher; as unemployment continues to rise; as housing options, especially for the poor, decrease and rental rates increase; as the campaign to scuttle rent control continues; as this council continues to hand Cambridge over to Harvard and M.I.T. (the Holy Trinity--Harvard claiming two-thirds of that equation); you can rest assured that serious and potentially dangerous activity between citizens and police will dramatically increase--and that increased activity will take on profound racial as well as economic features."

"All the more reason why citizens must make the City Manager accountable; why citizens must make the City Council something other than a weekly debating society (in public) and a vehicle for cronyism, career advancement and the care and feeding of friends and relatives (in private).

"Citizens must also make it plain that the police apparatus--from the Chief on down--is supposed to be designed as a support mechanism in the social order. It is not designed in order to beat someone's eye out--as in the Anderson case. It is not designed to close its collective eye to the anguished months--long cries for help before dreadful, unnecessary and racially-inspired killings occur--as in the Price family case."

What transpired at and resulted from this citizen-packed City Council hearing?

Chief Reagan announced to an astonished Councilman Wylie that: "There is a direct correlation between excellent police work and the number of brutality charges brought against an individual officer."

Both Chief Reagan and City Manager Sullivan declared lack of knowledge as to when the now recovered Anderson tapes would be transcribed and an Internal Affairs Hearing could begin. The Council failed to pin the Chief and the City Manager to a specific timetable, and completely dismissed the Coalition demand that additional clerical assistance be hired to complete the transcription in order to commence a public hearing on the Anderson case within ten days.