An Information "Lock Down" Doesn't Serve the Public Interest

City Manager Rich Rising some time ago ordered all City staff not to have any direct contact with Councilors. Any contact must be approved by him. He says that is his way of making sure Councilors are well served. We say it is his way of controlling government. We’re told that we’re not allowed to have direct access to any department heads because that would be "micro-managing" and we’re certainly not supposed to solicit input from the so-called “rank and file” city employees. Other communities have a ‘Personnel’ or ‘Employee Relations’ committee where union reps. and others can offer candid assessments of city policies directly to council members, but no such luck here in Geneva. This is what we call the “information lock down.”

So as we grapple with issues of youth violence in Geneva, and proposals for a gun amnesty program and a “curfew” (see our post from May on that issue), we must rely on a third hand report from the police department (the Council hears what the City Manager says the Chief reported that the officers and command staff shared). Sound convoluted? We think so, too.

And it’s totally inefficient. A question is raised months ago: What can we do to curb youth violence, vandalism, and other issues in the community? Granted, there’s no easy answer, it’s a complex problem. But it seems like the first thing you need to know in order to answer it is: What do the police officers think? These are the people dealing with the issue day in and day out. Don’t you think they have some ideas?

You might think we could just break “the rules” and go out and talk to the guys directly. Well, the last time Councilor Augustine had a candid conversation with a DPW employee about an idea for improving the department, the city administration tried to get her to reveal the identity of that person so that he could be fired for insubordination. Don’t worry, Augustine didn’t spill the beans. But we don’t want our police officers to suffer the same Grand Inquisition.

Maybe we could speak to them ‘unofficially’, like if we all happen to be in the same place at the same time and the topic happens to come up? That’s not useful either because we still can’t tell council what we’ve learned without revealing that the guys talked or having the majority of council accuse us of making it up. If they don’t believe us when we discuss studies showing the negative impact of high property taxes (and they don’t believe it) then how can we expect them to believe a report from us about what the police officers want done?

Instead, we’re expected to make decisions based on a set of facts that have been filtered through many channels. Here’s an example. Last year, a woman living on East North Street approached council asking us to take action regarding “gang activity” in her neighborhood. Councilor Capraro asked, at that meeting, to get a report from the police department about levels of “gang activity” in that part of the city and the city as a whole. We received a short memo. from the Chief of Police stating that there are no gangs in Geneva. Period. But we still have questions about that. Did he mean that we don’t have nationally-recognized gangs? Does he mean that we don’t have gangs that are specifically organized to commit crimes? What exactly counts as a ‘gang’? And how should we describe what’s going on in some of Geneva’s neighborhoods?

We need to hear directly from the officers that are on the streets and in the schools about what they’re seeing. We know that there has been an issue with making sure the department is fully staffed, but if we assume that’s being resolved (as we’re told that it will be), what other strategies would they suggest to deal with the problems of drugs and violence? What are their thoughts on the ‘curfew’, gun amnesty, or other efforts to promote parental responsibility?

All in all, we believe that Geneva is a great city, a safe city. But some of our residents have a much different experience. If there’s a way that City Council can make a change for the better, then we must act. But we can’t pull answers out of thin air.