Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Even Aunt Polly Knew not to Pay Tom $75,000 for a WhiteWash Job

By Emerson Drake 6/1/11

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Even Aunt Polly Knew not to Pay Tom $75,000 for a WhiteWash Job
Submitted by Emerson on Wed, 06/01/2011 - 12:55
Yes everyone remembers Mark Twain's book Tom Sawyer and how after being told to whitewash the fence by Aunt Polly Tom managed to get others to do it for him. It appears that the Modesto City Manager and City Attorney along with the Chief managed to farm out their responsibility to Bob Aaronson.

After reading the report the first item of note that jumps off the page at us is Aaronson blasts the anonymity of the letter while he never mentions the Craig Plante email that started the questions. Craig Plante used his name and Aaronson conveniently "forgets" that fact.

Another is that Aaronson spent approximately $5,000 of the $75,000 interviewing MPD officers. No mention is made anywhere that he interviewed a single member of the public. $70,000 reading old reports written by the very officers he's allegedly investigating. Did he expect to find signed confessions in the reports he read?

Another is the lack of any mention of the first report he wrote for the city, a report that won't be made public.

I wonder what we might find there?