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Susan Young is the Bangor Daily News opinion editor.
A commission created by Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey after the Oct. 25 shooting in Lewiston, has an unwieldy name: The Independent Commission to Investigate the Facts of the Tragedy in Lewiston. But its task — to identify what went wrong before and after the mass shooting, and why — is essential to reform laws, policies and procedures to prevent future similar tragedies.
The massacre in Lewiston, in which 18 people were killed and 13 injured, was one of the worst mass shootings in American history. As with other mass shootings, it appears many warning signs were missed or not adequately addressed.
So, it is a bit worrisome to me that the commission, which met for the first time last month, is already being politicized. It has been criticized by some for having the wrong approach and wrong membership. Mills and Frey also have been criticized for how they created the commission and whom the commission has hired as staff members.
An early criticism of the panel is that it doesn’t include lawmakers and was not created by the Legislature. This misses the point of the commission — it is overseeing an investigation — and the fact that it needs to move quickly.
Lawmakers no doubt have a role in helping Maine learn from and seek to prevent another tragedy like what happened in Lewiston. But, in my nearly 30 years in journalism in Maine, I have seen far too many legislative commissions and task forces, most of which were well intentioned, work for months on recommendations that were summarily ignored. The events in Lewiston are too important and seering to have a large legislative-appointed commission meet for months to issue a report with divided or politically motivated recommendations that can be easily dismissed.
That is not what the Lewiston commission is or should be. As already articulated by some of its members, its job is to zero in on “the facts” of what happened and systems failed. That means collecting information, interviewing people and thoroughly investigating the many different entities that interacted with the shooter, Robert R. Card II. That’s why the panel needs subpoena power, which the Legislature must give them.
The review commission has already hired two investigators, including Brian MacMaster, who worked for decades as an investigator in the attorney general’s office. MacMaster has been criticized for having close ties to police, Frey and, especially, Mills, who served as attorney general for eight years, before being elected governor in 2018. Both Frey and Mills are Democrats. By this same measure, MacMaster has close ties to numerous governors and attorneys general of all political persuasions. He has worked under Democratic, Republican and independent governors. He, like others who are either on the commission or hired to help with its work, should be judged by their work, not their past connections.
However, there is room for a legislative review as well. If lawmakers believe that there are other aspects of the events leading up or following the Lewiston shooting that need analysis and investigation, they should do that. The more perspectives, the more information that is considered the better.
Launching such a review, however, should not be a prerequisite for lawmakers approving subpoena power for the commission. They should quickly approve that request when they convene in January.
A more muted, but understandable, criticism of the commission is that it does not include family members of the victims of the Oct. 25 shooting. I don’t mean to sound uncaring, but family members are not investigators. They have much to add to Maine’s consideration of what happened in Lewiston, but they aren’t positioned to oversee an investigation.
What family members do bring to the conversation is passion and urgency. Both are invaluable and can’t be lost in the assessment of what led to the Lewiston tragedy, and what can and should be done to try to avoid further mass shootings. Those voices must be heard and respected.
So, it is encouraging that the commission and the governor’s office are working to identify valuable roles for family members, recognizing that each person will handle their grief differently and may seek very different levels of participation.
The commission reviewing the Lewiston shooting has a weighty task. Its work should not be distracted or denigrated for political or personal reasons.