Trans women of color and formerly incarcerated individuals in Nashville, among other groups, must help city officials monitor members of the Metro Nashville Police Department, said members of the city’s Community Oversight Board.
COB members said this in a letter they sent to Mayor John Cooper this week. Cooper invited members of the COB to serve on a Use of Force Committee. COB members accepted.
Members of the COB said they “strongly recommend” that the following groups of people, among others, participate:
• Immigrants
• Homeless people
• LGBTQ (with a specific focus on Trans women of color)
• Senior citizens
• Faith leaders
• Formerly incarcerated individuals
• Racially-diverse Nashville natives.
“We strongly believe the addition of these community groups is indispensable to the success of this Committee and will be of great value to the team. We also feel it necessary to note the importance of ensuring that Committee members are not currently seated elected officials,” COB members told Cooper.
“For the Community Oversight Board to be fully engaged in this committee there must be intentional space for the voice of the community to be heard both before and during the course of the scheduled meetings of the committee. The recommendations of this Committee should offer a clear understanding of when each recommendation will take effect (no longer than 30 days without special exception) so that the success of these goals are both expected and measured.”
As The Tennessee Star reported last month, COB members plan to help city officials find Nashville’s next police chief. Chief Steve Anderson will retire in likely six months’ time. This, as reported, after left-wing activists and Metro Council members pushed for either Anderson to resign or for Cooper to fire him.
As reported, Anderson would not meet with COB members, and that caused friction. Nashville Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) members have long said they have serious constitutional concerns about the board. FOP members have even said the board is “set up for some means of retaliation and retribution for a problem that doesn’t exist.”
As The Star reported in April, COB members demanded that police officers stop asking people about their immigration and citizenship status.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
If you believed the media you’d think that trans folks were like 10% of the population instead of the .01 they prob are
In other news, the Nashville council is considering allowing wife beaters to perform oversight over the women’s shelters.
Makes as much sense…
I’m pretty sure you have the right to “call” yourself anything you want but it doesn’t change what sex you were born with and decided at conception. There is NO such thing as a trans or whatever you want to call yourself. Someone that was born a man will never carry a child in a womb and no one born a women will ever provide the sperm to ever fertilize the egg. Get off this FALSE perception. NO SUCH THING AS A TRANSGENDER PERSON. And stop patronizing the review board. Just like body cameras, it will NEVER change anything with their preconceived opinions.
I have declared myself to be a Yellow School Bus. For the sake of diversity I should be on this board because my group has no representation. Therefore we are being discriminated against.
I demand social justice and true equality for Yellow School Buses everywhere.
Yugoslavia
I started to try to write something humorous about this article but there isn’t anything humorous about it. If ever there was a Police trap, the Nashville COP is it. I fully understand why Chief Anderson refused to meet with the COB.
You and your hangups about trans-people and other non-conformists. You right-wingers need to get a life.
Tell you what: since you right-wingers think that trans-people are predators, we will hold you right-wingers to the same standards that you hold them. If we learn that any of you right-wingers yourselves are predators who are trying to falsely implicate trans and other non-conformists as predators, we will go after YOU instead and expose you for the hypocrites you are!
I’m shaking in my boots. I didn’t see any comments below from any of us stating that trans-poeple were predators. On second thought, you have to admit that anyone who is a predator, is a non-conformist by not subscribing to socially acceptable standards and behaviors.
William, those are your words not mine or others. You are the one who linked “trans” with predator. But to be clear, I think that their self described sexual behaviors are abhorrent, unsanitary and disgusting. BUT, if they want to do what they do, that’s fine with me, just don’t ask me to condone, agree with or advocate for it.
Hew William Delzell? Somebody get his panties in a wad this morning? Nobody said anything about trans people. But the Community oversight board sounds uber left wing and therefore will not be fair in the assessment of police. It that offends you so be it, I do not care if you are offended. I think we have laws in place to take care bad cops, COB needs to be done away with.
Making sure that every possible aggrieved group participates in watching the police helps ensure that no one will want to be a police officer in Nashville.
I love how the left put actual academic qualifications in the back seat and base their priorities on race and gender. No wonder the states they run are so messed up.
This Minority Review Board is a disgrace, the democratic leadership in Metro pandering for votes put this gutter trash board in place. If we had a Mayor and leadership that had the best intentions for the majority of the community, trash like this board would have never been created. These people are idiots Another colossal mistake for Nashville.
I noticed that the “strongly recommended” groups didn’t include Trump supporters.