Williamstown Town Manager: Change in Police Leadership

The Williamstown Town Manager Monday indicated that when it comes to rebuilding trust between the community and its police department, all options are on the table — including the removal of the police chief.

Jason Hoch and Select Board member Anne O'Connor joined the town's Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Committee for more than two hours of its three-hour meeting to talk about the process the town wants to use to create a new vision of policing in the Northern Berkshire community.

DIRE Committee member Aruna D'Souza pressed the pair about whether that conversation could include a step that many in town have been calling for since August's release of a discrimination suit by a sergeant against the town, Hoch and Police Chief Kyle Johnson.

The DIRE Committee did not have a ready-made solution for O'Connor and Hoch on Monday but Chair Mohammed Memfis promised that his group — which includes a couple of trained dialogue facilitators in its ranks — will continue to engage with the Select Board on the question.

In the meantime, several attendees at Monday's meeting gave O'Connor and Hoch some direction for the kind of dialogue they should create.

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