Darkness closer to home

Outrage over the deaths of Black people at the hands of police officers has shuttled across the country like a planchette on a ouija board for months, sliding from Minneapolis and Louisville to Kenosha and, last week, Rochester — with far too many stops in between.

The March death of Daniel Prude, 41, a week after his apparent suffocation during a psychotic episode, came to light Wednesday when his family released video footage of the encounter. The length of time between the death and its coming to public attention can be seen in the fact that the video shows snow falling on the scene as officers put a “spit hood” over Prude’s face and then grind his head into the pavement.

The news resulted in an orgy of finger-pointing by city officials, with Mayor Lovely Warren and police Chief La’ron Singletary attempting to explain their silence by saying the matter has been under investigation by the state attorney general’s office — as if that somehow prevented them from even discussing the man’s death. Warren held another news conference the next day to claim the chief had misled her about the circumstances surrounding Prude’s demise, and to announce that the officers involved had been suspended.

Warren and Singletary richly deserve the criticism they’ve taken and will continue to take for remaining utterly silent about the latest episode in this summer’s racial reckoning. But save some of your attention for public officials a little closer to home.

If you think a five-month delay in action on a case involving alleged police misconduct is bad, consider that it’s been 16 months since Albany police officer Luke Deer was charged with felony assault and misdemeanor official misconduct after the March

16, 2019, police raid on a First Street residence. Albany County District Attorney David Soares has failed to take action on the case by either indicting Deer or announcing that he won’t pursue charges. In June, Soares lamely stated that the delay was due in part to the extensive video evidence pulled from the bodyworn cameras of all the officers involved. On Friday, Soares’ office told me the matter “remains open and pending.”

That’s what passes for swift justice.

The case of now-retired Cohoes police officer Sean Mckown, who admitted to firing his service weapon in an apparent attempt to scare off a racially mixed group of young people in rural Essex County in early June, is once again the subject of an investigation by the State Police, despite the fact that its initial probe into the incident wrapped up at some point in midsummer. Essex County District Attorney Kristy Sprague, whose office appeared to take a pass on bringing charges against Mckown in the

aftermath of the episode, has been under pressure in the weeks since these events were brought to light by this newspaper. Sprague has pointedly refused to answer a host of questions about her office’s handling of the matter; now that investigation is once again — how shall I put it? — open and pending, she has a ready excuse to remain clammed up.

That’s what passes for accountability.

Moving across the Hudson, Troy Mayor Patrick Madden continues to refuse to release the taxpayer-funded memo that exonerated Sgt. Randall French from professional sanction for the 2016 death of Edson Thevenin, shot dead by French after he drove away from a DUI stop and was rammed into a concrete barrier by the officer’s cruiser. In that case, an internal police report concluded that French violated department protocols and lied about what happened that night.

Madden took the police department’s recommendation of who to hire to review the internal report — a fairly unprecedented step. When the internal report came to light amid the federal lawsuit brought by Thevenin’s widow, Madden leaned on the follow-up memo in trying to explain why French escaped discipline, but did so without releasing the document — using as his fig leaf the fact that it was attorney-client work product. As previously noted in this space, there’s nothing preventing Madden from releasing the memo.

That’s what passes for transparency.

Thevenin’s death and the official response to it will be back in the news this month as former Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove faces a bench trial on charges of perjury and official misconduct stemming from his decision to fast-track the grand jury proceedings that exonerated French within days of the killing. Abelove’s fate will be decided by state Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Nichols of Columbia County.

If you’re a little cynical or maybe just a reader, Nichols’ attitude toward whether Abelove should even be in court for this matter can be sniffed out by the fact that he dismissed the charges two years ago in a decision that concluded the state attorney general’s office had overstepped its statutory jurisdiction. That decision — which did not address the evidence against Abelove — was unanimously reversed last year by the state Appellate Division.

Knowing Nichols’ attitude to the legal framework upon which the prosecution of Abelove is based, it might be hard for people to believe he’ll be able to render impartial judgment on the case itself — and in a bench trial, he’s a one-man jury.

But apparently that’s what passes for jurisprudence.