Uh-oh. Public officials are “investigating” again. This time the public officials are way up in Rochester, N.Y. The back story goes something like this: On May 12, Rochester resident Emily Good decided to record a police stop on her iPod. Described in several news reports as an activist, Good said she was concerned that racial profiling might be afoot when three white police officers stopped a black motorist.
Rochester police Officer Mario Masic demanded that Good stop recording and go back into her house. Good replied that she had every right to record police activity from her own property, which New York state law allows, by the way.
At that point Masic tried to whip out the “officer safety” card, telling Masic he didn’t feel safe with her recording him. He arrested Good and charged her with “obstructing government administration,” whatever that nonsense is supposed to mean.
Prosecutors in Rochester’s district attorney’s office — who clearly don’t live in the police state world where Masic spends way too much time — had the charge tossed out.
Good then lawyered up, and her attorney, Donald Thompson, said in late June that he and his client plan to sue the Rochester Police Department. (The video of Good’s arrest didn’t hit You Tube until mid-June.)
At a public meeting to support Good, some Rochester cops thought it would be a good idea to ticket cars of those who attended. The offense? The cars were parked more than 12 inches from the sidewalk. Aren’t there any real criminals to arrest in Rochester?
According to news reports, three of Rochester’s leading officials have publicly responded to the controversy, and this is the gem of wisdom that Mayor Tom Richards, City Council President Lovely Warren and Rochester Police Chief James Sheppard bestowed on the city’s residents:
“We believe that the incident that led to Ms. Good’s arrest and the subsequent ticketing for parking violations of vehicles belonging to members of an organization associated with Ms. Good raise issues with respect to the conduct of Rochester police officers that require an internal review. A review into both matters has been initiated.”
A “review” is simply another name for an investigation. And when a spokesman or spokeswoman for any police department anywhere in the land says there will be an investigation, that’s cop-ese for “we don’t intend to ever get to the bottom of what happened.”
Remember the raid on Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home in Prince George’s County three years ago? Like Good, neither Calvo, his wife, Trinity, nor his mother-in-law did anything wrong. A package of marijuana some characters shipped to unwitting residents landed on Calvo’s doorstep. He picked it up and brought it into the house.
It transpired that the characters would arrange for the packages to be sent to random addresses, where one of them would pick them up. According to news reports, members of the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Department, who sent the SWAT team that burst into Calvo’s home and fatally shot his two dogs, knew what the setup was.
During the initial phase of the controversy, it was the Prince George’s County Police Department whose spokesman was handling all media inquiries. I called to ask what was the reason the SWAT team burst into Calvo’s house, instead of knocking.
The law of the land is that cops have to knock, unless they have reason to believe their safety will be threatened or that evidence will be destroyed.
What, I asked the spokesman three years ago, was the evidence that led cops to believe that either they wouldn’t be safe or that evidence would be destroyed if they knocked?
By now, you know the answer: “that’s under investigation.”
Uh-huh.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
