Both Chief Reagan, City Manager Sullivan, and the Council refused to address themselves to the recommendations as contained in the Liacos investigation of the Largey case.
Both the Chief, the City Manager and the Council swore and pleaded as to the impotency of their office when it comes to dismissing misbehaving officers. According to them, they are powerless to do other than hope, trust and pray that the Civil Service Commission will take action.
As for Captain's Cusack's Internal Affairs track record of five hearings held and no officer dismissed or disciplined out of seventy-odd official complaints of police misconduct--nothing! No response whatever except for a suggestion from Councilman Wylie and City Manager Sullivan that the International Association of Police Chiefs make a second visit to Cambridge in the course of their current investigation of the Cambridge Police Force.
The demand for a citizen's investigative unit, after much debate, backing and filing was tabled on a legalistic note until next week.
The City Manager, Chief Reagan and most members of the City Council are mechanical blocks of concrete. They are incapable of human responses. One gets the feeling that if you step on their toes a memo or some pre-fabricated oral rendition will issue from their mouths like a bubble gum ball from a penny candy machine.
On the way out the door, City Manager Sullivan complimented me on my presentation. As if that were the point. Such maddening nerve! Such insufferable arrogance! Such inability to comprehend the scope of community needs and desperation!
There is no need to make doomsday predictions. Neither the City Manager, the City Council nor the Chief of Police will read or hear for meaning until it is too late.
In the meantime, the City Council has approved, on the City Manager's suggestion, a $60,000 grant from the Committee on Criminal Justice, Dept. of the Commonwealth of Mass., for a Police-Community Task Force Program that was thoroughly repudiated by significant segments of the Cambridge community a year and one-half ago.
Calvin Hicks is a member of the Coalition to Combat Racism, a faculty member of Staten Island Community College, and a Program Planner at the Institute of Learning and Teaching, University of Massachusetts at Boston.
Mayor Sullivan's Statement
Walter J. Sullivan submitted the following to The Crimson as his "full statement" on the police civilian investigative unit:
I am opposed to the proposals of the Coalition to Combat Racism.
The statement that was issued by the Coalition on September 7, 1974 was in itself racist; and in my opinion, served only to increase tensions, not decrease them.
I would suggest that the members of the Coalition look closely at the cooperation that took place in our sister city of Boston during the height of the busing situation.
This is the kind of cooperation that I support and the city of Cambridge should strive for.
"...The City Manager, Chief Reagan and most members of the of concrete. They are incapable of human responses."
"...Chief Reagan anounced...that: 'There is a direct correlation between excellent police work and the number of brutality charges brought against an ...officer."
"...until a few months ago, the 250-man Cambridge Police Department had only five black members and now has only ten. There are no black sergeants, lieutenants or captains."