More emergency shutdowns of
Harris nuclear reactor
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New local organizations clash over
police accountability

By Shane Perlowin

Asheville, North Carolina, June 4 (AGR)— On Thurs., May 29, in the conference room of the Skyland Fire Department in Arden, a contentious and colorful public meeting regarding police accountability in Asheville occurred. It was the first gathering of a new local organization called Support Our Police (SOP). The organization was founded and is co-chaired by local right-wing gadfly Chad Nesbitt of Neighborhood Safety Watch, who also co-organized the “Support Our Soldiers” pro-war rally that occurred in City-County Plaza on Mar. 5, and Asheville Police Officer Mike Lanning, who is also the president of the Asheville Police Benevolent Association. SOP was formed to discredit claims of police brutality that are being made public by an organization called Asheville Justice Watch (AJW).

AJW, an organization that is actively pursuing the creation of a citizen’s oversight board for the Asheville Police Department (APD), has already generated some controversy in the community by posting video footage on the internet that shows an Asheville anti-war protest in which several people were arrested. AJW posted the footage without the consent of all of the individuals shown in it, who still have court cases pending. Also, the means by which AJW acquired at least one of the videos has been questioned.

Some community critics also feel that a citizen’s review board, which would have to be approved by city government, would add another link to an already alienating bureaucratic chain and that, if approved, the board would be co-opted and essentially become a public relations office for the APD, further legitimizing abuses by the police.

About 60 people attended the SOP meeting. Present were APD Chief of Police Will Annarino, City Councilmen Joe Dunn and Carl Mumpower, and over two dozen police officers and their families. Only four representatives from AJW were present and were subjected to a barrage of skepticism and insults.

At the start of the meeting, Nesbitt asked AJW to take to the podium and present their case and plans for a citizen’s review board. AJW spokeswoman Karen Van Eman proclaimed: “A citizen’s review board is about accountability. We expect public schools to be accountable. So, there are externally derived tests that public schools must administer. We expect non-profits and charities to be accountable. They must go through annual auditing. We expect corporations to be accountable. We’ve seen what happens when the auditing is done by somebody who is just a friend of the corporation. City council is accountable because we hold elections every two years. We expect accountability in all these aspects of our lives, so a review board is simply another aspect of the democratic, checks and balances, accountability process.”

AJW claims a pattern of police brutality, unresponsiveness of the APD Internal Affairs process, and citizens’ fears of retaliation for filing complaints warrant an external body to hold police accountable. Yet, according to AJW’s Barry Summers, the plan “has to be approved by city council and our state delegation, taken to the legislature, voted on, brought back to the city, and created. We don’t have any pretense of creating a lynch mob in that process.”

Many of the responses to AJW’s comments ranged from the irrelevant to the absurd. Nesbitt said that at the AJW meeting the previous evening at the Montford Community Center, the term “constitutional rights” was brought up numerous times regarding the APD’s response to an anti-war march at which Summers was arrested. Nesbitt asked, “Well, what about the constitutional rights of the people who were trying to drive home from work while you were sitting in the street blocking traffic?”

Summers responded, “I can’t speak for anyone else who was there, because I went along to take pictures.”

Nesbitt persisted, “Do you think the police officers were doing their constitutional duty by asking you to get out of the street?”

Summers replied: “I think the police that were there were trying hard to do the right thing, and I saw a lot of cops that didn’t seem to know for sure what they were supposed to do. And that’s a scary situation for both cops and for people who were there. I’m not saying that I know what every cop should do in every situation, and I’m not excusing the actions of any people who were there. I’m saying that I saw police who didn’t seem to know how to handle that situation. And if there were something like an oversight board, they might be able to recommend the proper training for those types of situations.”

The main points of contention that SOP members raised concerning AJW’s proposal were over the fact that police officers would not be allowed to sit on the oversight board and that the board would have subpoena power over police officers. Summers reassured SOP that AJW’s plans were “just a sketch.”

Steve Rasmussen, spokesman for AJW, stated that a review board would simply make recommendations to city council. Rasmussen stated, “We don’t want to step on city council’s toes.”

Accusations by speakers that AJW had a “personal grudge” against the APD and were seeking “revenge” or “monetary compensation” and claims that AJW was relying upon “third party information” with no “facts,” “specifics,” or “research” to back their claims were recurring themes.

AJW did have, in addition to the protest videos, a large dossier of specific instances of police brutality, but the information was not examined.

Many seemingly irrelevant questions were asked of AJW, like “Have you ever been a police officer?”, “Have you ever served in the military?”, “Are you a citizen?”, “How many times have you all been arrested?”, and “Do you pay taxes?” One attendee described AJW as “a bunch of wild-eyed, left-wing radicals who want to take the power away from the police.”

When Van Eman claimed that “black and brown people” are afraid to file complaints, APD Officer David Simmons retorted, “You’re making it seem like we’re monsters… In the city of Asheville, the majority of individuals I’ve dealt with that are African-American are uneducated. And if the process don’t work for that individual, then they form organizations like [AJW] to hide behind. [AJW] don’t represent the African-American individual. They don’t even have the shoes to fit in because they’re not African-American.” Simmons asserted that the black individuals who support AJW’s agenda are “on a revolving door in and out of the jail.”

Councilman Joe Dunn said that if people were afraid to file a complaint with APD Internal Affairs that he would be “happy to take their calls” and they could contact the Police Advisory Committee, on which he “proudly serves as a member.” Dunn said that the black community is “begging us for more police to come to black neighborhoods.” He urged AJW to come to the next police honoring ceremony and went on to say: “When you come with some facts that are legitimate… I don’t want to hear stuff about a parade through Bell Chere with a dragon. I mean, come on, let’s get real, let’s talk about important issues. Come to us, we’ll work with you. We’ll listen to your complaints. But, let’s keep things in balance just a little bit. I think some of the things you guys say are just a little bit off the wall.”

Bill Snider, coordinator for chaplains of the APD, described the “courteous, considerate, and kind” nature of APD officers and offered: “If we’re not careful, we can’t see the forest for the trees; we’re like a bunch of untrained dogs chasing possums or something. But, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me.”

Attendee Fred English took to the podium and said: “I was born and raised in these mountains. We don’t need no oversight board. If we want an oversight board, I’ll appoint one.” He then scolded Nesbitt for letting AJW “run the show” during the meeting. Commenting on the protest/police brutality video, English said, “I loved it, I think it was text book, the way they went in and took ‘em out. We used to do that in the military police. But, we didn’t have to answer to nobody. We cracked heads.” He then pointed at Rasmussen and said, “I’m seventy years old. And that boy right there, I’d like to teach him a lesson...”

After cutting English short, Nesbitt said: “We appreciate your comments, Fred. And that’s why it’s an open meeting.” English begrudgingly retook his seat at the back of the room.

A woman who identified herself as the wife of an APD officer took great offense to the proposed oversight board. She stated that it was a “serious jab” to the officers who are “already so unappreciated.” She said that arresting “bad people” was not easy. She described how when people are arrested they don’t simply put out their hands and say, “Thanks Mister Officer for taking my crack away, now take me to the jail please.” She said that the police are “yelled at and spit at and cussed at every day by all the bad people in Asheville.”

The meeting closed with a lengthy speech by APD Chief Will Annarino that received a standing ovation. He admitted that the APD was “out of control” in the 70’s and 80’s, but that it has since mitigated the problems of that era. He said: “The citizens of Asheville have no gripe and in a lot of ways they are spoiled... Our officers are fair and even-handed... They set their own standards...There are already too many damn controls over our officers... Police are an easy target for groups like AJW to get their tentacles in to operating and finding out what it is that this secret society of government does... We’re not perfect. We’re not robots. Pray to God you never have robots patrolling your city because I don’t think you want that. You want that human action.” He finished with a warning to AJW: “Be careful about what you do, and let the process work. If the process is broken, it’s gonna be fixed one way or another, I can tell you that. That’s what government is about.”

When asked if AJW still thinks it is worthwhile to pursue an institutional solution to the problem of police accountability after experiencing such a backlash from the dominant institutional establishment in Asheville, Rasmussin replied, “I think their very defensiveness shows how worthwhile it is, because obviously they wouldn’t be so upset about it if there wasn’t a problem that they are aware of.”

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More emergency shutdowns of
Harris nuclear reactor

Durham, North Carolina, May 23— The Shearon Harris nuclear reactor suffered at least three emergency shutdowns in the past week as operators tried to resume full power after a month-long refueling outage. A fourth system failure occurred last Friday while the plant was still off-line for refueling. Still another, and possibly the most serious problem, happened in late April when a valve in the primary cooling system failed during the refueling period, which triggered a special investigation by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

The string of failures comes on the heels of four emergency shutdowns and other plant problems last year. The industry average is one shutdown per 18 months. Reports to the NRC from plant owner Progress Energy indicate that causes of the latest problems are still under investigation. The agency will later determine their safety significance, and whether to lower Harris to a second-tier safety ranking, which happened last year.

David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said today that risks at a nuclear plant are usually determined by unknown factors. He said Harris’ problems could be caused by worn out or aging equipment, personnel error, or improper calibration of instrumentation. “Either could be of concern. The danger comes when an initiating event, such as these trips of the reactor, are followed by either an operator error or another compounding factor.” He added that such a combination of factors are what led to the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 and the disastrous explosion of the Chernobyl reactor in 1986.

Harris had been scheduled to resume full power production late last week after workers replaced fuel in the reactor core and performed scheduled maintenance on the overall power plant. Restart was delayed last Friday when a back-up cooling pump was activated during testing of the primary cooling system. The next three setbacks happened as the reactor was being powered by backup. A turbine problem on Sun., May 18 was followed by a failure of primary cooling for the reactor on Tuesday, which activated back-up cooling pumps; both events caused emergency shutdown of the reactor.

Last night, May 22, the reactor was up to 72 percent power when it tripped again due to vibrations in the main cooling water system. A Progress spokesman said the vibration might have been caused by a faulty part replaced during the recent maintenance.

Earlier this month, a special NRC team spent two weeks at Harris investigating the Apr. 26 malfunction of a relief valve in the primary cooling system that caused an interruption of core cooling, reportedly for five minutes, early in the refueling process.

Even when a nuclear reactor is off-line, large amounts of water must be circulated to keep the reactor core from overheating. While the reactor vessel head is off for weeks during refueling, the heat generated in the core is not being removed by steam generators as it normally is when the plant is operating. Buildup of heat in the system could leave little time for operators to correct a loss of core cooling before the water boils and allows radioactive steam to escape from the containment dome, which is not intact during refueling.

Source: NC WARN

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