It was just a couple of months ago that Naperville’s Municipal Center (City Hall) was considered a hostile work environment, and Naperville’s city manager Doug Krieger was given a verbal reprimand, and ordered to participate in the city’s ‘harassment prevention and diversity awareness’ training.
There has been no announcement yet from the city council or on the website as to whether or not Krieger has completed his training. Based on recent comments by Krieger, my guess is that he hasn’t completed the training.
The Daily Herald reported that an out of town man is accused of throwing a woman to the ground in Naperville. Krieger commented that the battery for which the offender is accused occurred “away from the general action in the downtown area”, and nobody was seriously injured. He also stated that the city’s downtown, experienced a relatively quiet Labor Day weekend. Chicago also experienced a relatively quiet Labor Day weekend with 37 wounded in gun fire and three dead.
So a woman gets slammed to the ground, but as long as it doesn’t happen in Naperville’s combat zone (downtown), Krieger implies that it’s not that important, body slams happen, nobody died, she wasn’t that seriously injured, everything is fine, it’s just a woman ,we have a lot of them in Naperville.
It’s no big deal to Krieger as long as lots of money was spent in Naperville this Labor Day weekend, beer was flowing out, and tax dollars were flowing in.
The assault happened a stone’s throw from what Krieger defines as downtown Naperville, or as residents refer to as Naperville’s combat zone. One way for Kreiger and city officials to lower the crime rate in downtown Naperville is to simply keeping defining the area as smaller and smaller, until it officially becomes only the intersection of Washington St. and Chicago Avenue.
The same type of logic was used by Naperville city officials when they eliminated the problem of homeless people, by referring to them as urban street dwellers.
Maybe it’s time for Naperville’s city manager, Doug Krieger to finally attend his sensitivity training, or go back for a refresher.