Police Politics in Whatcom
A City Council meeting devolves into bickering as members attempt to oust a police captain through manufactured charges.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
An adjourned meeting of the council was held last evening for the stated purpose of investigating charges against Police Captain Wight, but no progress whatever was made, although the officer in question was there with his attorney prepared, he said, to answer any accusations which might be preferred against him. The entire time of the council was occupied in wrangling about the matter in 'schoolboy' fashion, as one of the councilmen expressed it, the evident object of the investigators of the 'investigation' being to abolish the office of captain of police, for which it is openly admitted that there is not now and never has been any necessity. With this end in view, some trivial charge has been trumped up against Wight to furnish the council some show of reason for his removal, but they were 'without form and void' last night and the council, after a prolonged discussion, decided that they must be made specific and be subscribed to under oath before being further considered.
“The entire time of the council was occupied in wrangling about the matter in 'schoolboy' fashion.”
The practice of using performative administrative investigations to remove political appointees is a timeless feature of municipal governance. Today's council battles over police oversight and budget priorities in Bellingham (formerly Whatcom) echo these same internal power struggles.
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