Chelsea City Council Moves Forward with Results of Bobcat Police Audit

By Doug Marrin, STN Reporter

The Chelsea City Council has received the operational audit from Bobcat Consulting and has set a work session for October 18 at 6:00 pm to begin analyzing the report.

The operational audit comes as the result of a recommendation by an independent investigation last winter of events that took place on Friday, July 31, 2020, between Chelsea police and protestors. The investigation was conducted by attorney Bruce Judge of Whistleblower Law Collaborative. The report was presented to the City Council at its February 1, 2021, meeting. Among other suggestions, Mr. Judge recommended an audit of police department standard operating procedures.

The City hired Bobcat Consulting out of Tallahassee, Florida, to conduct the audit. Unlike the Bruce Judge investigation, which focused on the events at the protest, Bobcat was contracted to examine the CPD’s operational policies.

In the report’s introduction, Bobcat explains, “Our overall approach examines policies, training, supervision and accountability. We employ a two-tiered evaluation process, first comparing policies and practices against generally accepted standard practices most often cited in the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Model Policies, and secondly against policies that we see in departments that are in substantial compliance with consent decree policy mandates or the standards created by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), which are often deemed to reflect ‘best practices’ throughout the industry.”

The cost of the audit was $35,000.

The Bobcat Report was officially submitted to the Council at its September 20, 2021, meeting. A link to the entire report can be found below.

With the audit in hand, it is now up to the Council to work through the recommendations. During the public comment portion of the Council’s meeting, several members of the public urged the group to delay taking any action on the recommendations until after the November election when the new council is in place.

Councilmember Pacheco began the discussion with, “I have had a chance to read through the contract, but it is dense and not necessarily in a language that I speak…I would appreciate a little bit more time to get my head around what some of the recommendations actually mean”

Ms. Pacheco suggested a work session sometime in the second half of October, emphasizing that the current council should begin the conversation, saying, “All seven of us have given considerable time and consideration to this, thus far, and deserve to weigh in on it.”

Councilmember Feeney agreed that there is a lot of content in the report to work through. However, it doesn’t all have to be addressed in one meeting. “I think there’s a year’s worth of work in the report,” he said. “I’m glad we’ve gotten to this point. I hope everyone else feels good about it.”

Councilmember Albertson concurred that it would take multiple work sessions to work through the audit. Ms. Albertson also emphatically made a point that she would repeat several times during the discussion as to the lack of urgency the Council has shown over the matter.

“We ought to work more assiduously on this issue,” she stated. “I am not okay with how long it has taken us to get to this point.” Later in the discussion, the council member added, “We need to get the business of the City done more efficiently than waiting more than a month to schedule this work session. If you have a scheduling conflict, then I'm sorry. But we have to get the work done.”

The City Council set the first work session for October 18 at 6:00 pm, before the regular council meeting.

The entire Bobcat Audit report can be viewed at the link below.