Update: After two hours, public comment concludes at Modesto City Council meeting
Update, 8:10 p.m. Public comment has concluded. The council is taking a break before moving on with the rest of the meeting.
Update, 7:32 p.m.: The meeting has resumed, with people still in council chambers. Zwahlen said the city will clear the room if the audience can’t remain quiet while people speak.
“To clarify, the room was not cleared,” she said.
Update: 7:25 p.m.: With continued back and forth between speakers and audience members, Zwahlen said she is closing the meeting to in-person participation.
“In order to hear the speakers and continue the meeting we will need to clear the room,” she said. The meeting is on a break while that is done.
Update, 6:55 p.m. - Public comment has stretched on for nearly an hour, with some speakers demanding that the city stop its Forward Together initiative and drop the charges against former officer Joseph Lamantia, and others speaking in support of the process and of the Seever family.
Mayor Sue Zwahlen has had to stop the meeting twice to get the crowd to quiet down and to get speakers to address the council instead of one another.
Original story:
About three dozen people gathered at Tenth Street Plaza ahead of Tuesday’s Modesto City Council meeting. Several are wearing shirts with logos of “Proud Boys,” a far-right group.
One man spoke to the crowd and said they were there because they do not support the Forward Together Committee, and to show their respect for a Modesto police officer who was fired and charged after a fatal shooting in December.
“Forward Together” is an initiative by the Modesto City Council to evaluate and improve policing in the city. Options the city is exploring could include a citizens oversight committee, which has been formed in other areas.
The Modesto police officer who was fired is Joseph Lamantia, who lost his job and was charged with voluntary manslaughter after the December shooting of a unarmed man. Family members of the man, Trevor Seever, have filed a claim against the city over the death. They also are on hand in council chambers.
Neither of those items are on tonight’s agenda, so any comments the supporters will make will be confined to the public comment portion of the meeting.
This story was originally published June 22, 2021 at 5:53 PM.
