Town Will Fund Independent Review Of Investigation Into African Meeting House Hate Crime

At the urging of a citizen petition approved by Town Meeting earlier this year, the Select Board is seeking applications for a private firm to review the local and state investigation of the African Meeting House hate crime case stemming from racist graffiti spray-painted on the front of the historic building in 2018.

Members of the Nantucket community, including Jim Barros and Rose Marie Samuels, have long criticized the town’s handling of the case, which never resulted in any criminal charges. This criticism culminated in a lawsuit alleging town officials violated the civil rights and free speech of Barros and Samuels and, earlier this year, a Town Meeting warrant article sponsored by Gail Holdgate asking the Select Board to authorize and fund a new independent investigation as well as a review of the original investigation. The article passed, and although it was non-binding, the Select Board provided an update on its response to the petition Wednesday night.

While the Select Board declined to pursue a new investigation, it will authorize funding for an independent review of the original investigation.

“We are doing the parts we think are valuable,” Mohr told the Current on Thursday. “What we are doing is evaluating what happened, how the process went about, a thorough review - soup to nuts - of what happened in the investigation and how it was handled with an eye on evaluating the efficacy and whether mistakes were made.”

During Wednesday night’s meeting, the board shared an outline of the scope of services it will put out for bid.

“This scope of work authorizes the independent investigator to pursue all avenues of inquiry to investigate the work that was done,” Select Board chair Brooke Mohr said. “It’s a very comprehensive and thorough review of the investigation.”

Among other things, the scope of work authorizes the investigator to “conduct a complete file review of all Police Department files and all publicly available files from the District Attorney’s Office, Massachusetts State Police, and Attorney General’s Office related to the African Meeting House investigation” and “identify any deficiencies in the steps undertaken by the Nantucket Police Department and include findings as to any further steps that should have been undertaken.”

The scope of work, which the Select Board endorsed unanimously, also asks the consultant to “provide recommendations as to how similar incidents could be handled more effectively in the future by the Police Department and the Town.”

While the warrant article suggested the investigation should have the oversight of the article’s sponsors, including Holdgate, the Town determined that this was not permissible under municipal finance.

“We are not allowed to write a check to a citizens group to do an investigation,” Mohr said. “That is not a way we can spend money.”

Still, the review of the investigation will be independent and conducted by an outside firm.