Steve Thurston (2021)
Adam Walker, center, speaks to Lt. Jason Mitchell in the hallway outside the Saratoga Springs City Council chamber, July 21, 2021. Walker had been tackled and arrested during a protest July 14.
Black Lives Matter Saratoga may have gotten their wish.
During a raucous public comment period at the Saratoga Springs City Council meeting Tuesday evening July 20, a comment period that included shouting, cursing, gavel slamming, demands that Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton resign and stop her run for mayor, a renaming of the city to “Selmatoga” (a reference to the Alabama town central in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s), name-calling, and a command from Saratoga Springs Police Lt. Jason Mitchell that “Everybody leave, the meeting is over,” Commissioner of Finance Michele Madigan conceded.
“We clearly have a lot of work to do, this council and the next council and the community and all of you in this room,” she said to those assembled. All five council seats are on the ballot for this November.
Someone in the gallery asked if BLM could meet city leaders, with a professional mediator, a demand they had been seeking.
“Yes we can, and I think we should,” Madigan said. “I think we need some meditation. I would like to discuss this with the rest of the council, but it seems like we need some professional mediation.”
The council did not vote on or even voice opinion about the chances for a meeting. The meeting is one item on BLM Saratoga’s list.
The group is also asking for an independent investigation into the death of Darryl Mount who died under what they consider suspicious circumstances in 2013, and the creation of a police oversight “Civilian Review Board” that was approved by the Police Reform Task Force earlier this year but was not immediately approved by the city council.
The CRB and no-knock warrants were two of the 50 recommendations to come from the task force that were approved as part of the overall report but were not approved for immediate implementation by the city council.
Those two recommendations were referred to a new, three-person city committee to look at how best to implement them. The committee empanelled by Mayor Meg Kelly in June was made up of three people on the original task force and has reported to the city council once. It is due back in front of the city council monthly with a charge to bring data and recommendations to the council by the end of the year. The committee is responsible to oversee all 50 of the recommendations in the police reform task force report.
The delay in the CRB has long been a point of contention for people in the city who support it.
[Read more about the task force here. Read about the committee here. Read about BLM demands here.]
“That’s the most public conversation we’ve ever had,” said BLM Saratoga leader Lexis Figuereo as he was leaving City Hall. “I got her [Madigan’s] phone number.” He plans to call her and other to force the meeting.
During the chaotic public comment period, before the room was cleared, Dalton attempted to tell the audience that she has reached out to BLM Saratoga many times and has received silence to those requests. She was shouted down Tuesday evening by the audience.
Figuereo has either denied that outreach was made or said that the meetings were not significant. He has said publicly and told FoothillsBusinessDaily.com many times that he does not trust Dalton and thinks she is a racist.
Most people speaking during public comment were reacting to both a press conference that Dalton held with Assistant Chief of Police John Catone on June 28. They also were reacting to what they see as police abuse last week during a protest in which five people were arrested, some of them tackled. One of the five was charged with a crime, a misdemeanor. The other four were given disorderly conduct citations.
[Read about the press conference here and the protest here.]
At the start of public comment, Mayor Meg Kelly had reminded everyone that she planned to allow 15 minutes total, at two minutes per person for the public comment period. This is the normal allotment of time during city council meetings.
About a half dozen people had spoken when Alexus Brown took to the microphone. She told the story of how she and her boyfriend believe they were targeted on their way home after last week’s protest.
Police followed their car for over a mile and then stopped them on a dark section of Maple Avenue. They pulled into her mother’s driveway where police searched her car.
Brown said she was told the stop was part of an ongoing investigation. No weapons were found and no ticket was issued.
When Brown reached two minutes, she kept talking while Kelly interrupted and tried to stop her. The gallery called back, the name calling began.
Kelly attempted a compromise that said if people would stick to two minutes, she would let more speak, running past her 15 minute deadline. By then, the back-and-forth between the council and the audience had started.
Police eventually walked in and said the meeting was over, though the council had only tried to move from public comment to the rest of the night's agenda. Fifty people were in the room, a dozen or more were in the hallway. About a dozen police officers were inside or outside the council chamber.
Eventually, the room cleared and the arguments with police moved to the hallway. Heated discussions about police abuse of power continued for another 30 minutes or more.