One of the more interesting aspects of Greensboro’s Chief Wray debacle involves a report (the RMA) prepared by outside consultants for internal consumption by Greensboro’s leadership. Questions swirl around both the legality of releasing the full report on the conditions leading to Wray’s firing and the public necessity of those revelations.
A number of GSO bloggers, current ‘blogger and former Council candidate Dave Hoggard for instance, have called for a redacted version to be released. As the Hogg points out,
After reading the whole thing I’m convinced our City Council should call a meeting and vote to release at least the first 31 pages of the report (Section 1). From my non-legal view, that section of the report confirms Bledsoe’s Rhino reported investigations and presents all of the justification needed for the public to understand why David Wray is no longer employed as our Chief of Police.
Others, like Greensboro’s newest ‘blogger (but longtime commenter), The Conservative Alternative, question the assertions that legal action can and will be taken against GSO ‘bloggers publishing the report “in toto”. The grounds for doing so, at least based on her/his analysis, seem pretty shaky.
My interest is more than academic. As a local citizen working on governance issues, the extent to which I can publish or provide documentation of governmental malfeasance hinges on the legal determinations at play in cases like those exposed by Greensboro’s RMA report.
This is one of the reasons I support the Electronic Frontier Foundation and their efforts to preserve and protect the online community’s First Amendment rights.
