Richmond is taking a second look at allowing city employees to clam up to police after staffers refused to divulge details this week about a bloody brawl in their City Hall offices.
“Whenever you have your policies tested, that’s a time to evaluate them and see if they’re working,” said City Manager Bill Lindsay.
The issue arose Oct. 14 when paid participants in the city’s anti-violence program, the Office of Neighborhood Safety, fought at the department’s city office.
City policy allows that department’s employees to decline to speak with police in order to maintain the trust of the gang members they work with.
Police called to the fight found enough blood to indicate a felony-level assault might have occurred, but the apparent victim had left.
In the week since, Office of Neighborhood Safety employees have refused to divulge the names of all those present during the fight, police say.
The policy worked out between the office and the Police Department during the program’s formation in 2007 dictates that staff communicate with office Director DeVone Boggan, not police, in order to ensure confidentiality.
Boggan, the liaison between the office and police, has declined to speak with this newspaper for the past week.
Lindsay endorsed the existing policy this week in a letter to the City Council.
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“We are not the police,” said peacekeeper Kevin Williams. “We have to use the same rules as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. If you give up the list of the people we’re trying to serve, then you erode the trust.”
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*Here are government employees and the volunteers working for them keeping felony crimes under wraps to protect the criminals! This might explain why the Holly Hill PD protect the NA/AA members identity. Because they work with these people as well to obtain information. Even if citizens are threatened they protect criminals that attend AA/NA. This article shows to what extent Holly Hill City Hall and police will protect criminals. When will the City of Holly Hill put the local citizens and children first?
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19158519?nclick_check=1
Murder in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous article.
AA/NA keep secrets the crimes of the fellowship.
Citizens of Holly Hill Florida knows this all to well.
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‘AA has long strived to protect its identity as a program without leaders, a program built upon the foundation of addict helping other addicts. But I can’t help but wonder—given some of the examples detailed here—whether or not some kind of formal training should be required before someone takes on the massive responsibility of sponsoring another addict. After all, if I were to set up an office tomorrow and advertise myself as a psychotherapist, I imagine I would be closed down in a matter of weeks unless I had the necessary qualifications. Yet AA sponsors, unpaid and untrained, are entrusted with the spiritual and mental wellbeing of fragile—and occasionally dangerous—newly sober people every single day. Surely it’s not too critical to suggest that the program as a whole should consider implementing some basic protections for sponsors and sponsees alike?’
http://www.thefix.com/content/sick-our-secrets4000?page=all