MCC Day 6 - Participants Requesting Police Witnesses
Today was occupied by requests from participants to have 18 various non-commissioned police officers brought before the MCC to provide testimony. This is a continuation, in a way, from yesterday’s proceedings, where parties were making similar requests regarding various civilian witnesses. As I noted yesterday, this entire procedure is unusual, whereby the default position adopted by the MCC seems to be that there will be no witnesses called, except as something of a last resort, and they need to be convinced otherwise. Mr. Scott spoke well about the need for witnesses from the broad perspective of the public interest, and Ms. Miller and Mr. Bryson were very effective in pointing out specific points that have not been covered by the existing statements, from the decisions by the first officers on scene to stay on foot, to the interactions with the children that had to wait two hours to be evacuated, to the discussions around containment options. In all cases, the lawyers for the police said the questions could be answered in writing, or that the details may come in later Foundational Documents. There are more police officers to be discussed. Two more ‘front line’ members, and six supervisors have been requested, but there was not time today to complete the submissions, and so that will continue on Monday next week. We can hope that the Commissioners will have a decision on at least some of the officers early next week. Their explanations for why they might allow certain witnesses to be called will be important to parse, to get a sense of how the months ahead will unfold.
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