WHY MUST WATERTOWN HAVE A HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION? BECAUSE “THE CITIZENS HAVE SPOKEN!” WELL, NOT EXACTLY.

A friend once told me, during a dinner conversation, that the single best thing a parent could do for their kid was to help that kid develop their inner bullshit detector. Over the years, that pearl of wisdom has come to resonate with me, more and more. And local politics has a lot to do with that.

When it comes to politics, I hate blatant exaggeration. I don’t automatically call it lying because sometimes the exaggerators don’t know they are exaggerating. That can easily happen when they live in a political bubble that they believe is a lot bigger than it actually is.

Political bubbles are echo chambers where like-minded participants validate and reinforce the ideas of the group. So when someone professes to be speaking on behalf of the community, implying that they are speaking for all or most of Watertown, they are either lying or they’ve been fooled by the loud, constant voices blaring within their echo chamber.

I would like to make it clear that I hate political exaggeration even when it comes from those I agree with, which might explain why I have never found myself living inside a political bubble – that, and the fact that I am way too anti-social. 

On February 7, the city council’s rules and ordinances committee met to discuss the new ordinance, which once completed, will establish Watertown’s first human rights commission.

If you’ve been busy with that time-consuming thing called life, you may have no idea what I’m talking about. A human rights commission? Where did that come from and why on earth do we need one?

Let me take you back to March 12, 2021, when a group of Watertown progressives took over the town council’s committee on public safety to present their agenda for police reform.

They called themselves the Joint Police Reform Group (JPRG) and they were on a mission to expose and root out racist behavior in the Watertown Police Department.

The group laid out some very specific demands “on behalf of the community.” One of those demands was the implementation of a Police Community Advisory Group, which, included among their long list of demands was to be given the authority to “participate in interviews with potential new hires to provide a citizen perspective in the hiring and recruitment process.”

After seeing their very detailed agenda and watching the first committee meeting on Zoom, all I could feel was anger. Who were these people? What made them think they were so entitled? And what racist police department were they talking about?

If you did not watch those meetings, you might question my response. But if you watched every infuriating minute of each meeting, you either applauded their performance or you were as angry as I was and you took it as not just an attack on the police but an attack on the community.

This was a “choose your side” deal. There was very little middle ground.

From my standpoint, Watertown was fortunate to have a police department, led by a chief who was ahead of the game in enacting the principles of 21st-century policing, while hiring, training, and motivating good (many of them young) police officers during very trying times.

In my opinion, our police department’s morale was at stake and bad morale within a police department could only lead to weakened public safety.  

The JPRG maintained its occupation of the public safety committee for four Zoom meetings, in 2021, beginning in March and ending in October, with heated arguments taking place on social media surrounding those meetings, and one demonstration and simultaneous counter-demonstration taking place on Main Street in front of the police station.

The ugly spectacle included some unwelcome out-of-town anti-police agitators, taunting the crowd and trying their best to bait the cops, who were there to maintain order and prevent violence, showed just how fragile a community can be.

Was there racist behavior within the Watertown PD? Well of course there was, according to the more vocal proponents of the Joint Police Reform Group. To deny it, you would have to be either hiding behind your own racism or just plain clueless. All the JPRG needed was to be granted access to the department’s records and files and they would discover the evidence.

They would be doing this of course for the entire community, which would include you and me. Wouldn’t we all want to save Watertown from becoming Minneapolis or Ferguson?

I learned a lot during the eight-month battle for the soul of Watertown.

I learned that there are people of color in Watertown who find the sight of a man or woman in a blue uniform to be traumatizing to them and to their children. And that the solution lies not in persuading them that their fear within this particular community is unwarranted, but rather in reducing the number of blue uniforms that they are likely to see.

I learned that abuses of people of color by Watertown police officers are common but we do not hear about those incidents because the victims don’t come forward with their complaints. Why don’t they come forward?  Two reasons. They either believe that their complaints will be ignored or they fear retribution from the Watertown police.

So, those victims stay hidden from public view, but they do reveal themselves to certain individuals, with the understanding that they will remain anonymous. Honestly, I expected that at one of the meetings, one or several of these victims would be introduced to the Zoom audience as proof of their existence.

How much safer could they possibly be than to go public with their stories of police abuse, while being flanked by high-profile members of Watertown’s highly influential progressive community?

But the big reveal that I expected never happened. If it had, it undoubtedly would have been a bases-loaded, walk-off homerun for the Joint Police Reform Group and for the establishment of the Police Community Advisory Board.

And now time has passed and it’s a new ballgame. We have a new city council and a new committee on public safety. The Joint Police Reform Group lost its momentum and appears to no longer exist.

Watertown’s would-be police reformers would have to find another way.

And maybe they did.

 

The Watertown Charter Review Committee was formed for the purpose of recommending updates to the town charter (a kind of mini-version of the U.S. Constitution – the document, not the ship). Beginning on October 6, 2020, the committee met twenty times over a period of nine months and hammered out a list of proposed amendments to the charter.

The process was well publicized, and you probably caught sight of it somewhere but you may have been too preoccupied with your own personal covid-world problems to give it the attention it deserved.

The committee, made up of the council president, all of the eight town councilors, and six Watertown residents, put in a lot of hours to get the job done in time for the amendments to be placed on the ballot for the November 2021 election.

Significantly, the committee lost a member when Ken Woodland resigned from the council to take a job with the state. There’s a term in football called “setting the edge.” A defensive player sets the edge by forcing the ball carrier to stay in the pack and away from the sideline where he might find a wide-open field in front of him.

In council meetings and in the charter meetings, one of Councilor Woodland’s self-chosen roles seemed obvious. It was to keep discussions from veering off from the practical and pragmatic and into ideological brainstorming where they could gain enough momentum to be treated as serious proposals.

He would strategically change the direction of a discussion by laying out a commonsense position that would provide other members with the cover they needed to line up behind him. I would argue that his loss resulted in a wide-open field for the ideological “ball carriers” on the committee.

Would he have chosen to oppose putting the human rights commission on the ballot? And would he have succeeded if he did? I don’t know. For history’s sake, someone might ask him.

At the 2021 election, we voted on that amendment and on a host of others. Or some of us did. And that’s another story, to which I shall return, right after giving you my take on the February 7, 2023 meeting of the rules and ordinances committee.  

Did you happen to tune in? Probably not. Almost no one did, except for a small group of people who were instrumental in getting the establishment of a human rights commission through the charter review committee and onto the ballot. Some of the same people were members of the Joint Police Reform Group.

If you missed the February 7 meeting, you mainly missed seeing a few people doing a lot of verbal high-fiving and congratulatory backslapping. Chairperson Gannon was anxious to get going with “robust dialogue” from the public but the celebration needed some warming up so State Rep Steve Owens stepped to the podium to break the ice.

He said that the soon-to-be Human Rights Commission is “…a great opportunity for Watertown. The citizens have spoken. They want this.”

And he added: that this is “really important to me and my family and the greater community…”

Chairperson Gannon said: “Voters overwhelmingly… by a two-to-one margin voted to approve the amendments to the charter which established a human rights commission.”

With those echo chamber comments in mind, allow me to attempt to add some perspective.

In the 2021 local election, 6,169 out of 25,693 registered voters − about 24% − bothered to cast a vote. 19,524 of our friends and neighbors − about 76% − decided to remain silent. That 76% are literally the greater community.

What we can’t quantify is the number of people who showed up at the polls, having no idea which candidates or ballot questions to vote for. They believe it’s their civic duty to vote, but not their obligation to do the minimal homework required to cast an intelligent vote. So they ask a friend or neighbor or campaign worker for advice on how to vote.

I have run into way too many of these people.

Oh well, there’s not much we can do about non-voters and uninformed voters, but what about confused voters?

The charter review committee decided that their proposed amendments be split into two ballot questions. Here’s Question 1 as it appeared on the ballot:

 

 It’s pretty straightforward. Should we change the legal name of Watertown from the City known as the Town of Watertown to the City of Watertown? Some members of the Commission believed that this amendment would be a sensitive issue for many residents. The assumption was that longtime residents would feel disrespected if the name of their town were to change. So this amendment was given a ballot question of its own. Out of respect.

Fair enough.

Result: YES votes: 3,379 / NO votes: 2,445 / Left blank: 360

Now let’s take a look at ballot Question 2 as it appeared on the ballot:

I have 20/20 vision with my glasses on. English is not my second or third language. And for many years, my job required me to read and understand contracts, which were usually written in dense legalese and often in fine print. More importantly, I walked into the voting booth knowing the amendments that had been bundled into Question 2. But trying to decipher it as displayed in this screenshot makes my eyes glaze over.

How many YES voters knew they were voting for a human rights commission? How many voted YES despite the human rights commission amendment?  How many YES voters missed seeing the human rights amendment and thought they were voting for simple features to modernize town government?

We will never know.

Of all the questions piled into Question 2, this one, with so many implications and so much potential divisiveness, this one should have carried the same weight and been given the same respect as the “name of the city” question but it was not.

Result: YES votes: 3,790 / NO votes: 1,924 / Left blank: 504

Still, to give credit where credit is due, leadership, organization, and persistence on the part of a small group of activist residents paid off big time. And the 76% of registered voters who remained silent, gave them an awfully big assist.

During the February 7 meeting, Chairperson Gannon rattled off a list of Massachusetts cities and towns with their own human rights commissions. He then stated his desire to have the best HRC in the state.

Councilor Bays gave us a glimpse of what we might be seeing once the commission is up and running when she said:

“There are issues. I’ve heard of issues in this community. I want us to create something where people feel comfortable actually complaining, where they feel safe, where they go to complain… that’s what I would like to see in a human rights commission.”

My reaction: Ken Woodland, please come home.

An emailer asked if the Human Rights Commission “would be the appropriate vehicle for Watertown to consider the issue of reparations?”

My response to the emailer: Great question! We will check with other municipalities. If they’re doing it, we should do it. And we should be the best at it.

(If there are plans for Walker Pond, we might want to put them on hold.)

At the risk of being accused of over-quoting State Rep Owens, here’s one from his opening comments about the new commission that helps me understand why I have such a problem with the progressive dominance of local government:

“I think it’s very timely, given what’s going on in the country, the state, and the world...”

I am sure this statement makes perfect sense to most of the people in that room. To me, it’s an absolute head-scratcher.

The advocates of the human rights commission, just like the advocates for the Police Community Advisory Board, have a consistent underlying message to the community. Here is my interpretation of that message:

There is nothing special or unique about Watertown so do not fool yourselves into believing that there is. Watertown, like all other cities and towns across the state and across the country, is suffering from a disease. You may not see the disease, but we see it and we are working to stop it from spreading. You’re welcome!

Here’s my reply to that message:

You are wrong. All cities and towns are special and unique on some level. Cities and towns do not have identical twins. Watertown is being changed by rapid urbanization but a lot of its townish character stubbornly survives. Show me a “comparable” city or town and I will show you that there are more differences than similarities.

A police department reflects the community it serves. Police departments, like municipalities, do not have identical twins. While the uniforms are similar, each has its own distinct character.  

In an earlier article, I made this statement:

“In Watertown, parents, regardless of their skin color or immigration status, can promise their child that if they are lost or in trouble, they can run to the woman or man in a blue uniform and they will be safe.”

I say this with confidence, not just because I have lived here for forty-plus years, but  because I see this community, and I know that the Watertown Police Department reflects the character and values of this community.

Can a citizen of Arlington or Framingham or Burlington make the same claim with the same confidence? I have no idea. And neither do you.

The draft ordinance for our soon-to-be human rights commission stipulates that the police chief should act as a “liaison” between the police department and the human rights commission. Will this turn into the second coming of the Joint Police Reform Group?

I hope not. But time will tell.

The draft ordinance will be discussed at the next meeting of the committee on rules and ordinances, which will take place at city hall on Monday, March 13 at 6:30 pm.

If you attend the meeting or watch it on Zoom, please check the batteries in your B.S. detector. Just in case you need it.

 

 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle for Watertown