By Terry Miller
In the week following the release of the heavily redacted OIR report, residents voiced their opinion in no uncertain terms Monday night.
The Monday council meeting was subjugated with public input on how the police reacted and ultimately shot and killed Kendrec McDade, an unarmed young man who was accused of robbery.
The overwhelming number of speakers was angry that the police investigation took so long and was so heavily redacted yet pointed to obvious procedural miscalculations.
Anya Slaughter told the council and addressed the Chief of Police directly, ““Why didn’t the officers broadcast over their radios that they were chasing a subject that they believed to be armed?” she asked the council.
“I believe the officers never feared for their lives, and that they intentionally gunned my son down. Please, implement all the recommendations.”
More than 25 speakers spent two hours before the Council started in consideration of the evening’s other agenda items to comment on the report, following an announcement by Mayor Terry Tornek that the Council’s Public Safety Committee would hold hearings on the report Dec. 7.
Tornek told the crowded room that the hearings would be a “point-by-point discussion on the recommendations in the OIR Report, for as long as it takes.”
Councilmember Victor Gordo said, “We welcome the opportunity to go over the report, but I want to emphasize that this shooting was not premeditated, this event was not a murder.”
