Meidl unqualified to lead police

Officer Craig Meidl’s leadership skills were on public display back when he chose to follow the crowd and salute his good friend and fellow officer Karl Thompson following his felony conviction in federal court. This brazen insult to Otto Zehm, his family, this community and our legal system is now dismissed by Meidl as “instinctive” when it was clearly well thought out, orchestrated and intentional.

Meidl’s later written praise for Thompson, calling him “the most professional officer on the department” and “an innocent man” further demonstrated his fully vested position within the good old boy mentality that pervades the Spokane Police Department. Meidl concedes as much when he attempts to diminish his authorship by asserting his writing expressed the views of the department, rather than his own.

By his previous words and actions, and compounded by his cynical effort to reinvent justifications for them, Officer Meidl has clearly demonstrated he is uniquely unqualified to assume the leadership of a department so badly in need of reform. The city council should reject this stunning and disappointing example of business as usual at City Hall. We deserve better and were promised as much when Mayor David Condon first ran for office.

Tom Keefe

Spokane