For nearly a year, since the ambush arrest and perp walk of this newspaper's cofounder and editor on November 30 of last year, members of the Middleburg Town Council and town staff have refused to comment officially on those unfortunate events, much less assign responsibility for them. Their grounds? Advice of counsel that comment about an "ongoing investigation" would be inappropriate.

That investigation is now over. After a two-day trial that should never taken place; after a year of anxiety, legal expense, and threats to the very existence of this newspaper, a Loudoun County jury confirmed the obvious. Dee Dee Hubbard was not only not guilty of the charges lodged against her, she, her family, her friends, and this community were the victims of what defense attorney Ed MacMahon pointedly described as "baseless charges" driven by "obsession."

Much has changed since that ill-fated day last November.

The town, for the first time in years, now knows for sure precisely to whom its Police Chief reports, and has written that information down.

It's former Police Chief, under a cloud for his role in the Hubbard arrest, and most recently accused by her chief accuser of revealing confidential information about the date, time and place of her arrest a full week ahead of time, has retired.

Screening procedures for the recruitment, vetting and hiring of police officers have been reviewed, revised, and implemented.

A new, well-trained, highly respected Chief has been hired and he, in consultation with his new boss, has already hired and begun to train a new member of the force.

In an effort, no doubt, to give the Middleburg force a choice of weapons somewhere between a nightstick/baton and the force's standard issue sidearm, a .40 caliber Glock, the new Chief recently informed Town Council that he hoped to soon start training his officers on the appropriate use of a Taser.

The Town Administrator, now officially at the top of the police department's chain of command, has not only reviewed the Middleburg department's rules, regulation and standing orders, but has recommended new language, taken from similar documents in communities with departmental missions similar to those of the police force in Middleburg. Those changes have still not been adopted. The most important of them, given the unfortunate and destructive events of the last year, appears to us to be the adoption of the following paragraphs, taken from the Woodstock, VA, PD, and designed to prevent the humiliating events of last November 30 from ever happening again:

"When it becomes necessary to take a person into custody, a police officer shall do so in as easy and quiet a manner as possible, using only sufficient force to secure the prisoner, and in no instance shall he strike a prisoner except in self-defense. He shall see that the prisoner is properly dealt with and cared for until he is taken from his custody according to law, and any unnecessary deprivations and abuses of prisoners will be met with reproof and punishment."

We urge Town Council to move immediately to adopt the changes recommended by the Town Administrator in general, and the paragraphs governing arrest procedure, noted above, in particular.