The Chapel Hill Town Council will revisit the Yates Motor raid tonight when an advisory group formally tells the council it does not want to help set up a website to collect public comments about the Nov. 13 incident.

The council had proposed the website as a way to solicit anonymous witness testimony. It rejected the Community Policing Advisory Committee's request for an outside investigator, which the committee said would help it establish a factual timeline of events on which to base policy recommendations, its official charge.

The committee rejected the website 8-1 two weeks ago, saying there would be no way to verify the website comment's accuracy. (See our story here.) Instead it asked to work closely with a consultant the town has already hired to review the police response to the Yates Motor building occupation and suggest areas where policies can be strengthened. 

Eight people were charged with misdemeanors after a group of self-described "anti-capitalist occupiers" entered the long vacant building and announced plans to turn it into a community center.

Tonight's meeting begins at 7 p.m. in Chapel Hill Town Hall.

For recent opinion columns on the Yates Motor incident see:

"Police panel lacks any true oversight" By Geoff Gilson, CHN Feb. 26 (Click here.)

"An argument for commnity rights" by Barbara Trent, CHN Feb. 26 (Click here.)

We received two guest columns recently about the Yates Motor incident. The columns by Barbara Trent and Geoff Gilson will appear in Sunday's Chapel Hill News. I thought we'd give you a preview here on the blog.

Trent, founder of the Chapel Hill-based Empowerment Project and an Oscar-winning filmmaker ('The Panama Deception"), documented the fall of dictator Anastasio Samosa in Nicaragua in 1979. She writes:

"At that time the new government was dealing with situations not so different than the ever-empty Chrysler building. When Samosa fell in Nicaragua, he and his cronies looted everything they could, moved to Miami, and left behind only what they couldn’t move, namely the land and empty buildings. Their intention was to keep their properties vacant so that they could not be used to serve the community under a new government that they opposed.

"Nicaragua countered this strategy by passing laws requiring farmland be farmed, houses be lived in, and factories be in operation, in order for the owner to retain ownership. If after several years those requirements were not fulfilled, the owners lost all rights to the property and it was used for the betterment of the population. Farmland was deeded to large cooperatives of people to farm, and buildings were turned into clinics, museums, schools, libraries, and homes. Those properties served the people who lived in Nicaragua.  This process does not seem so different from our “eminent domain” laws.

The town's new Community Policing Advisory Committee rejected the Town Council's request to help create a website for residents' comments about the Yates Motor Co. police raid.

The committee, which had asked for an outside investigator to look into the Nov. 13 raid on the vacant former car dealership downtown, said a website would not produce reliable information. After listening to them, Chapel Hill Town Council member Jim Ward, who was among those who had supported the website, said he was "fully swayed" by the committee's objections.

"I'm convinced it's not the way to go," he said.

Member Jessica Smith, an attoney who had originally proposed the outside investigator, said the website would not help the committee establish a factual record of events on which to base policy recommendations, its main charge.

"It makes no sense for me to review something you have absolutely no means to test the veracity of,"she said. "This proposal is just one step further down the road of degraded information."

We have received two letters so far on Sunday's extended interviews with Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil and Police Chief Chris Blue on the Yates Motor raid:

From A. Carter Linstead: "Perhaps the questions the CHN interviewer posed could be characterized as 'asking the hard questions.' But to me the interview appeared to reflect an apparent strong bias on the part of the reporter. Virtually every question sounded more like an accusation."

From Niklaus Steiner: "Thank you for the excellent interview with Town Manager Roger Stancil and Police Chief Chris Blue. Thanks to probing questions from the interviewer and honest answers from Stancil and Blue, I am now assured that they acknowledge mistakes around these concerns and are taking necessary steps to address them." 

Tell us what you think about these interviews, the police raid or anything else about our coverage of local issues at editor@newsobserver.com.

Yesterday we brought you an excerpt of our interview with Town Manager Roger Stancil, his first since releasing an action plan and announcing the town has hired a consultant to review police policies and make recommendations for improvement. You can read an account of the interview with Stancil and another with Police Chief Chris Blue in today's N&O and a longer version in tomorrow's Chapel Hill News.  Here is an excerpt from our conversation with Chief Blue.

(In his report Jan. 9, Blue, who was out of town that weekend, describes a single attempt by police to speak with the protesters the night of the occupation "with the hope of persuading them to leave the building." A commanding officer stepped through an open garage door but left when confronted by people wearing masks and shouting insults.)

Q: So you're on the phone with your commanding officer. Does he tell you they didn't ask them to leave? Did you have that information?

Blue: No, we didn't have that conversation.

Q: Why not?

Blue: (Pause) Well, I think the best way to answer that is to say that it's difficult to dictate tactics being removed from the scene. We didn't discuss specific tactics.

The Chapel Hill Police Department will undergo specialized training in “peaceful intervention in civil disobedience” in the wake of its raid on the Yates Motor Co. building last fall.

In a memo to the Chapel Hill Town Council tonight, Town Manager Roger Stancil stands by the tactical team raid that removed seven people from the long vacant car dealership on West Franklin Street Nov. 13.

But Stancil says the Police Department’s experiences, policies and training “did not prepare us well for this combination of circumstances.”  

Town staff have not commented on the raid since a press conference the next day.

In his memo Stancil said the decision-making process the day of the raid was compromised by “a breakdown of communications, both internally and externally.” He did not elaborate, and the council has not yet discussed the memo.

The raid has strained community relations and the town has hired Investigative Security Services to help it design new policies and training that reflect the community’s values, Stancil says.

The chairman of the committee asked to review the Yates Motor police raid says some members are “curious” after a majority of Town Council members indicated Monday night they will likely oppose the committee’s request for an outside investigator.

In an interview today, Ron Bogle, a retired Superior Court judge, said he disagrees that there are no new facts to be learned from the police raid that removed squatters from a West Franklin Street building Nov. 13.

“Here is what is confusing to me,” he said. “I assume the council is asking us to do more than accept or check off on the internal review. With that comes the assumption that we have to ask questions, and if we don’t get answers, then find a way to get those answers.”

“If the town doesn’t want us to make that inquiry then they should just say, ‘We don’t want you to do that.’”

The letters are still coming in pro and con on the Chapel Hill Police Department's SERT raid on the former Yates Motor Co. to remove squatters last November. (Read our most recent story here.)

We have repeatedly asked for interviews with town leaders, including the manager and police chief, to ask what we think are simple questions, including why police did not explicity warn protesters to leave before moving in. On Friday, Town Manager Roger Stancil released the following statement. (Note: our requests predate the council's decision to send Stancil's report to the new police advisory committee.)   

“Out of respect for the process that began by the referral of the Yates Motor Company review to the Community Policing Advisory Board, and the Board’s subsequent discussion about a process they could follow, the Town staff will temporarily refrain from individual media interviews about the Yates Motor Company incident.

“Weak,” “one-sided” and “insubstantial.”

A new advisory panel reviewing the Chapel Hill Police Department’s removal of squatters from a former downtown car dealership blasted an official town report that stood by the police raid this week. (See that story here.)

So you’d think Town Council member and committee liaison Donna Bell might be feeling the heat.  

Not so, says Bell, who says she asked to serve on the new Community Policing Advisory Committee.

While she can’t predict whether the council will grant the committee’s request to hire an outside investigator to review the Yates Motor Co. incident, Bell says it’s good the committee is asking questions.   

“I don’t think any report is complete until someone has read it and asked questions,” Bell says. “It is not a shock or surprise that the mayor and the police chief didn’t answer all the questions.”

The committee’s discussions speaks well of Chapel Hill, she adds.

“There are very few towns that could even have this conversation,” she says. “When extraordinary things happen we need some clear eyes to give us perspective. We’re never going to do everything right.”    

Look for more on the advisory committee's discussion coming this Sunday in The Chapel Hill News.