Vote: Should Brookline's Greene Step Down After Chokehold Joke?

BROOKLINE, MA — The Brookline Select Board is voting Tuesday as to whether it should ask the chair of the Select Board's Committee on Policing Reforms to step down over a gesture he made in reference to choke hold bans at a committee meeting earlier this month.

In introducing a proposed ban on police use of chokeholds during a meeting, Select Board Chair Bernard Greene asked if the committee was ready for the next topic. And as he did, he reached up with a hand and placed it around his neck, as if he were choking himself. He started to laugh before apparently realizing what he had done. He said quickly: "OK, that wasn't funny. I know."

The meeting went on, but a clip of moment circulating online sparked heated discussion, with some people asking Greene, who is Black, to step down from his role as chair of the committee and as a town leader. Others compared him to the KKK and others stepped up to defend him, saying he has a tendency to make awkward jokes.

Greene has been a vocal advocate for police reform, and is the person who proposed chokehold bans in town. Greene issued a statement of apology. But fellow select board member Raul Fernandez and several members of the community say that's not enough and Greene should step down.

"If the chair's actions were merely inappropriate that would be a different conversation," said Fernandez, who is chair of the second policing reform task force. "The chair's behavior was egregious, unconscionable, unacceptable and inexcusable."

Fernandez said he told his task force group that anyone who exhibited that kind of "callus behavior" would be asked to leave, and said the same should be true for Greene's committee.

"This is a matter of principle," he said. "The public needs to know that we in our committees on reform and reimagining understand the seriousness of this work and the existential threat that the current state of affairs poses to Black people and others. Allowing someone who has joked about chokeholds to continue to chair a committee on police reform both erodes the public trust and undermines the seriousness of the committee's task."

Fernandez called for Greene to step down. If he didn't, he said, the select board should hold a vote. The vote is set to take place Tuesday.

Heather Hamilton said she was disturbed and disappointed by Greene's behavior. Although she said she was moved by Fernandez's comments she said she needed to see how Greene's committee felt about the behavior before a vote.

Select Board members John Vanscyoc and Nancy Heller both expressed support for Greene, and defended him, pointing out his work for the community.

Greene's apology

At the beginning of the Sept. 22 Select Board meeting, which he also chairs, Greene read his apology.

"I made a gesture in introducing the topic of a choke hold ban that was juvenile and interpreted as me as not seeing the issue of choke holds as a serious matter, which of course I do. Once I became aware that I’d made this gesture when a video clip began circulating on social media I prepared a circulated a statement," he said and then read it:

There is a video circulating showing me treating chokeholds in an inappropriate joking manner. That was a lapse and I apologize. I know that like many things in Brookline politics it will be weaponized. I will have to deal with that. But you should know that the proposal to ban chokeholds was initiated by me in June and I have been the person working to include a ban in the Police Department’s Use of Force policy since then. My proposed ban on chokeholds was adopted, with minor edits, by the Policing Reform Committee at its September 16 meeting. I take this issue very seriously; which is why I've been pushing for it for such a long time. In the beginning: Alone. It is not a joking matter and I will continue this work until we have a chokehold ban in Brookline.

Greene said he acknowledged that words and gestures can be harmful to people even if not intended.

"I am aware of the reality that police violence against Black people in far away places can have an impact on black people in Brookline," he said, noting that impact it could have on both him and his son.

In addition to apologizing, Greene said he has been consciously letting people have their say to express their anger and feelings and listening to it.

"And I've reflected on this in terms of how sometimes I can be kind of flippant, it's always been a problem and I've got to reflect on that and get control of that," he told Patch. "By reflecting on this I hopefully will make me a better man."

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