Chapel Hill will not conduct an online review of the Yates building raid

An investigation into the events of the Yates Motor Company raid may be permanently shelved with the rejection of the town manager’s proposed online forum.

At a meeting Monday night, the Community Policing Advisory Committee voted against facilitating an online forum that would aggregate information about the “Occupy Everywhere” police raid.

The forum was proposed by Town Manager Roger Stancil and would have replaced the committee’s suggestion for an independent investigation.

Committee deputy vice-chairwoman Jessica Smith said the online forum is flawed because anonymous comments would be impossible to verify.

“This proposal is one step further down the road to degraded information,” Smith said. “If the town thinks there is value in it, they should go ahead and do it.”

She said a private fact finder has limitations, but is the best option available.

The committee was tasked with investigating the events of the police raid after Stancil submitted a review that some protesters and residents criticized as biased and incomplete.

At a Jan. 23 town council meeting, the committee requested funds to hire a private fact finder. But the council deferred the request, and asked Stancil to consider other options.

He proposed a website to act as an open forum for the community.

But protester Alex Kotch, a Durham resident, said the independent fact finder is needed to produce an accurate time line and resolve contradictory information.

When the committee petitioned for funds to hire a private fact finder, they included a list of potential questions unanswered by Stancil’s report.

The committee wanted to determine if there had been communication with the protesters before the raid.

Stancil’s report states that there “were two unsuccessful attempts to communicate with those inside the building.”

But, in an WCHL interview, Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue said there had been some informal communication: once on Saturday night with the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership, and another on Sunday morning with a police officer on routine patrol.

But chairman Ron Bogle said it is not the committee’s job to act as an investigator.

“Our role is not to serve as a fact finding board,” Bogle said. “We are supposed to consider issues of policy.”

The next policing advisory committee meeting is scheduled for March 14, and the issue will be discussed at the Feb. 20 Chapel Hill Town Council meeting.

Contact the City Editor at city@dailytarheel.com.