There is not too much about the recent Eli Judge 911 Center Oversight Board “controversy” that has not already been said over at the CB. The letter of support for Alder Judge pretty much sums up how I feel about the issue. There is one thing however that I feel has been neglected: the blatant fearmongering of this section of the original letter:
Alder Judge, if you had a conflict in your schedule with the meetings of this committee, then you should have resigned your seat as soon as it was apparent so that the City of Madison could have been properly represented on the Board. To hold a seat on an oversight body of such a critical part of our public safety infrastructure, knowing that you were unable to fulfill the most basic of all duties, attendance, is to demonstrate woefully negligent indifference to the needs and safety of your constituents and Dane County as a whole. After the tragic death of Brittany Zimmerman and the galling failure of our 911 operations, many have wondered what role proper oversight could have played in preventing Brittany’s unnecessary death. We will never know whether real oversight could have prevented this or other tragedies, because your habitual absences deprived the City of Madison of its role in oversight of the 911 Center operations, a critical inter-governmental public safety function.
The idea that attendance at these meetings could have actually prevented Brittany Zimmerman’s death is such an unbelievable stretch on so many levels that proposing it ought to destroy any credibility that the letter might have had. It has nothing to do with even the politicization of the death of a student, the stirring up of student fears over such a non-issue is despicable. It would have required Eli’s attendance at meetings would have affected the functions of the board enough to cause some kind of significant change to the way the 911 call center functions. As great of an alderman as Eli is, there are several other members of the board that do more than just sit silently at meetings. And even then, there it is probable that nothing could have been done to prevent the tragedy from occurring anyways. While it’s true our 911 call center has some issues that need to be addressed, but I have yet to hear a scenario under which any of the proposed changes could have actually helped save Brittany Zimmermann’s life. Remember her location could only be pinpointed to within 150 feet, potentially not even close enough to tell which block her house was on. The string of improbable events that it would have taken makes even the thought ridiculous.
Not to mention the use of a tactic that the left usually uses to label more conservative political messages (see this Szarzynski column or any story on Obama’s recent comments about Bush and McCain) on either crime or national security issues should send the signal that it is clearly done for political purposes.
