YOU CAN’T FIGHT WU’S CITY HALL
You can’t fight Michelle Wu’s City Hall — and if you do try, expect some old school hardball tactics to send you packing.
That’s the message Wu’s sending out to employees and critics who dare challenge her, with the release of a summary of an “internal” affairs police report against a fired anti-vaccine police sargent.
Wu’s police department — or Wu herself — shared the summary report about terminated Sgt. Shana Cottone to disgrace her and rally public sentiment against her.
This handoff to media outlets is the worst kind of heavy-handed politics, the equivalent of shooting a mosquito with a cannon.
Now Wu or her new supposedly progressive police commissioner is going after one of the mayor’s most public critics. Firing her wasn’t enough, they had to shame her, too, with a Machiavellian smear job.
The shocking details of the report include things like Cottone wouldn’t leave a pizza restaurant when she was supposed to, and allegedly followed Wu with her car.
These acts may not be appropriate behaviors for a police officer but they are not high crimes.
The summary “internal” affairs report is supposed to be confidential — that’s why they call it internal affairs, not external affairs.
But that apparently doesn’t matter to the mayor, who is more concerned with getting even than playing fair.
The leaking of the document raises serious questions about what Wu knows about it, and did she direct police to release it or clear it with the commissioner?
What is the policy about internal affairs reports? Are they going to be releasing other internal affairs reports now?
Cottone is also among those protestors who — simply exercising their First Amendment rights — used to stand outside Wu’s Roslindale house, shouting into a bullhorn or ringing a cowbell to call attention to the mayor’s policy of firing employees who don’t get vaccinated.
But then Wu got the City Council to pass an ordinance barring the protestors from gathering outside her house early in the morning, an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment.
But Cottone continued her protests, which got her fired.
Now the mayor is releasing this internal affairs report to send a blunt message to other employees to stay in line or face the firing squad — along with an internal affairs report detailing your crimes.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs in City Hall, which has always been ruled by hard nosed politics.
Wu was supposed to be a breath of fresh air.
Turns out she’s just the same if not worse than everyone else.