Digital Forensics Firm Selected To Review African Meeting House Hate Crime

A work group has selected an independent investigator to review the town’s response and police investigation into the 2018 hate crime in which racist graffiti was spray-painted across the front of the historic African Meeting House on York Street.

The African Meeting House Investigation Procurement Work Group, formed to create a scope of work for an independent review of the investigation and pick a firm to carry it out, has chosen LCG Discovery Experts, a digital forensics firm based in Texas.

“[The work group has] selected an independent investigator,” said Malcolm MacNab, a member of the Select Board and the Chair of the work group. “The investigator will write a report and make a presentation to the [Select] Board.”

LCG Discovery Experts will conduct its investigation without interference and present the results directly to the Select Board. After a Select Board vote, the work group will be allowed to answer questions from the investigators, but that is the only input they will have.

“Any report produced as work product comes straight to the Select Board. It is not to be evaluated or amended by [the work group],” Select Board member Brooke Mohr said.

The town’s initial handling of the hate crime drew intense backlash from the community, the ripples of which are still reverberating today. Just last month, a judge ruled that part of a civil rights lawsuit against Town Manager Libby Gibson tied to the case could continue.

“The beauty of this is the investigator is an out-of-state company,” MacNab said. “We don't want an investigation by people on the island because there is so much emotion already out there.”

Even the town’s handling of the creation and scope of the work group hasn’t been free of controversy. Earlier this summer, a series of concerned citizens pressed the Select Board on the scope of the independent review and an error in the original request for proposals that inadvertently excluded a review of town administration from the parameters of the contract.

The RFP was the result of a citizen petition sponsored by Gail Holdgate that was approved at the May 2024 Annual Town Meeting. The non-binding petition - Article 36 - asked the Select Board to authorize and fund a new independent investigation, as well as a review of the original investigation into the hate crime. While the Select Board declined to pursue a new investigation of the hate crime, it decided last August to authorize funding for an independent review of the original investigation and send out an RFP for firms to conduct that review. Following criticism of its initial RFP and the process that created it, the Select Board established the African Meeting House Investigation Procurement Work Group to resolve the details with all stakeholders involved.

No one was ever criminally convicted for the graffiti, which included a racial slur and a phallus, but Dylan Ponce was found responsible in a civil rights case in 2022.

MacNab serves on the Work Group with AMH President and CEO Noelle Trent, airway systems specialist Clifford Williams, architect Luke Thornewill, and Chicken Box co-owner Rocky Fox.