NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The special commission formed to look into the Christmas morning bombing is meeting for the first time, Tuesday.
During today's meeting, there were a few procedural things, like approving certain positions. Following that, the nine members will get a report from the Metro Law Department and a separate report and overview of the bombing from Nashville's fire chief.
The function of the commission is to make recommendations on things like policy and procedure to reduce the likelihood of another bombing in Nashville. It also seeks to improve the city's response to similar events in the future.
The commission has a lot of power – for instance, they can conduct their own investigations and hold their own hearings.
I spoke with Judge Paul Summers, the chairman of the commission, who said his personal concern is finding out what other organizations are already investigating. He said they don't want to overlap, and they want to fill in any gaps.
As we know, this bombing rocked the whole country. Summers said they want to determine the full scope of the public’s interest, the causes, reactions and lessons learned. He said they are more of an auditor than investigator.
"As I look at it, we're going to basically be auditing, what's already been investigated. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure when all these investigations are done, all of these commissions have been have reported that the public figures out what happened, why it happened, and how we can prevent it from possibly happening again,” he said.
