At the urging of a citizen petition passed by the Town Meeting earlier this year, the Select Board is seeking applications for a private firm to review the local and state investigation into the African Meeting House hate crime, which was sparked by racist graffiti sprayed on the historic building’s facade in 2018.
Members of the Nantucket community, including Jim Barros and Rose Marie Samuels, have long criticized the town’s handling of the case, which never resulted in charges. That criticism culminated in a lawsuit claiming town officials violated the civil rights and free speech of Barros and Samuels. A motion sponsored by Gail Holdgate was made earlier this year for a Town Meeting hearing asking the Town Council to authorize and fund a new independent investigation as well as a review of the original investigation. The motion passed, and while it was not binding, the Town Council provided an update on its response to the petition Wednesday night.
While the Select Board has rejected a new investigation, it will approve funding for an independent review of the original investigation.
“We make the parts that we consider valuable,” Mohr told the Current on Thursday. “We are evaluating what happened, how the process went, we are conducting a thorough review from A to Z of what happened in the investigation and how it was handled, with a view to assessing its effectiveness and whether mistakes were made.”
During the meeting on Wednesday evening, the Board gave an overview of the scope of services it will put out to tender.
“This scope of work empowers the independent investigator to pursue all investigative methods to examine the work that has been done,” said Select Board Chair Brooke Mohr. “It is a very comprehensive and thorough review of the investigation.”
The scope of work authorizes the investigator, among other things, to “conduct a complete file review of all police department files and all publicly available files of the District Attorney’s Office, the Massachusetts State Police and the Attorney General’s Office related to the African Meeting House investigation” and “to determine any deficiencies in the steps taken by the Nantucket Police Department and to make findings regarding any further steps that should have been taken.”
The scope of work, which was unanimously approved by the special committee, also requires the consultant to “make recommendations on how similar incidents can be more effectively handled by the police and the city in the future.”
While the warrant article suggested that the investigation should be under the oversight of the article’s sponsors, including Holdgate, the city decided that this was not permissible within municipal finances.
“We cannot write a check to a citizens’ group to conduct an investigation,” Mohr said. “We cannot spend money like that.”
However, the review of the investigation is carried out independently and by an external company.
