The Spokesman-Review’s March 6 headline story regarding the status of former Spokane interim police Chief Scott Stephens contained an element familiar to readers who follow the city’s legal travails. That would be Stephens’ attorney, Bob Dunn, who has been eating Spokane’s lunch on a regular and highly lucrative basis. See The Inlander’s July 25, 2012, article entitled “Getting It Dunn” for some of the sordid or inspirational (depending on your perspective) details.

Providing the inventive Dunn a platform from which he can launch his considerable legal and theatrical skills is a fool’s errand that various Spokane institutions apparently feel compelled to carry out on a regular basis. There is an unsettling moth-to-the-flame aspect to the frequency with which this happens, followed by an equally unsettling shooting-fish-in-a-barrel aspect to the ease with which Dunn extracts his pounds of flesh.

One can only hope that some learning is happening along the way, in the interest of decreasing the Spokane area’s subsidizing of Bob’s Hawaii Shangri-La.

David Fietz

Springdale