Burnt Orange Report

Canton School Shooting Update

By Vince Leibowitz

Several days ago, when Canton, where I reside in Van Zandt County, hit the news because of the unfortunate school shooting, I noticed that a couple of my fellow bloggers here blogged on it.

Since we're pretty much to the "aftermath" stages right now--waiting for the coach to recover, waiting to see what the judicial system will do, etc.--I thought it might be interesting to let readers of this blog know a little more about the rest of the "aftermath" of the shooting. In particular, the impact the shooting may end up having on our local elections next month.

First of all, a little background is necessary. For several years until the fall of 2004, the Canton Police Department and the city of Canton provided Canton ISD and Canton High School specifically with a "School Resource Officer." This was a police officer (in this case a very dedicated and highly regarded lady named Michelle Abio) who was basically assigned full time to protect the campuses and also work with the students so they understand that police are there to help, etc., etc.

Anyway, last year, when our police chief was unceremoniously demoted to dispatcher by the new far-radical, right-wing Republican City Manager, Charles Fenner, the new "public safety director," who now serves essentially as fire and police chief, decided the department couldn't afford to have the school resource officer. Keep in mind also that, for a town of 3,500, Canton has a fairly sizeable police department because of the fact that once a month, anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 people come here for First Monday Trade Days.

Well, when Officer Abio was being removed from the school, she was asked, at a school board meeting, what the school could do to prevent it from happening. As I recall, she basically told them they would have to make their voices heard to the city. Now, everyone can plainly see that the officer was exercising her right to free speech, so the city couldn't fire her for that. Instead, the pulled up a stupid, trumped-up "charge" up from the past that the old chief had already taken care of, and fired the officer for that. So, the school is without a resource officer.

Though our local rag, the Canton Herald, won't dare report such a controversial thing, a lot of people in the city believe the shooting would have never happened if Officer Abio (or at least another SRO) was on the scene at the high school. If you've read the news accounts of the shooting and the shooter, you can see why they may believe that. Personally, I believe if someone's dead-set to causing violence like that, they're going to find a way to do so--officer or no officer. But, there are evidently a lot of people in the city who feel otherwise, and who feel their children were placed in danger because the SRO was taken away.

For the last week, I've heard what I'll call "rumblings and rumors" that a fairly large delegation of parents would be descending upon the Canton City Council meeting next Tuesday to speak during the public comments portion of the meeting to make their opinions known. I wasn't sure it would happen until last night. Rather late last night, I recieved a call from a person I knew from my tenure at the local newspapers (back when they reported the news) who told me that, in fact, a number of parents of school-aged children are trying to make this happen and who asked if I knew anyone else in town who wasn't a parent who might join them and also speak on their behalf. Unfortunatly, I didn't, and this is one fight I plan to stay away from for a number of reasons. But, while it may happen absent the watchful eye of the Associated Press and other news agencies, I firmly believe the Canton City Council will have an interesting "Come to Jesus," meeting with some of its constituents Tuesday.

As for how this will affect the local elections, I believe that both the two-term mayor and opposed incumbents on the council will be defeated. I believe the mayor will be defeated by a fairly large margin and that one council member will be defeated by a small margin. After all, these are the folks that hired the new city manager (who was elected to the council before being named city manager and is a protegee of RPT Executive Director Jeff Fisher, former VZC Judge) who got rid of the old police chief who in turn screwed up the police department. All of this has, by the way, resulted in several lawsuits against the city.

One of the most interesting suits charges that the city couldn't hire either a city manager or a public safety director because it doesn't have ordinances in place to do so, if I remember correctly. This would make the city manager's decisions null and void (supposedly) since the Local Government Code delegates specific powers to the mayor and council unless an ordinance is adopted otherwise.

Anyway, that is what is going on in Canton right now. I just thought some of BOR's readers may find the "small town politics" angle interesting.