Soares shifts on cop probes
Special prosecutor sought in charges against officers
In a policy shift three weeks before the Democratic primary, Albany County District Attorney David Soares on Monday asked Gov. Andrew Cuomo to appoint Attorney General Letitia James as the special prosecutor in every criminal case in which a police officer is charged with a crime or accused of misconduct.
Soares, a four-term Democrat, who refused to recuse his office from investigating the Albany police shooting of Ellazar Williams in 2018 and other cases involving police-civilian confrontations, announced his shift of positions in a news release on Monday evening.
It came in the wake of violent protests and rioting in cities across the country, including Albany on Saturday night, following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, who lost his life after an officer kneeled on his neck during a confrontation.
“I watched in stunned disbelief the life of a man being taken and streamed repeatedly on social media,” Soares stated in the release. “These are not unprecedented incidents and yet real solutions are lost as attention is given to the subsequent violence and discussions are reduced to relationships between police and prosecutors. This cannot continue.”
Soares said that effective immediately, his office will seek special prosecutors “on all new cases involving police as defendants.” It was unclear if the district attorney planned to recuse his office from the prosecution of Luke Deer, who is charged with felony assault and official misconduct for his alleged actions in the beating of man during a March 16, 2019 clash on First Street.
On Monday, Soares said he is calling on the governor to expand his executive order from 2015 and to allow James’ office to handle “ALL of these matters, thus eliminating any appearance of conf lict or skepticism of the process.”
In 2015, the governor’s executive order allowed the attorney general to investigate the deaths of unarmed civilians during interactions with the police. Soares’ office has previously said
that Williams’ case did not fit that criteria because, according to the office’s investigation, Williams was armed with a knife and survived the shooting.
But Soares’ office drew fiery criticism from activist Alice Green and others for not recusing his office from investigating the Aug. 20, 2018 shooting of Williams by Detective James Olsen, who faced no charges and was cleared. Williams, then 19, was shot following a police chase that ended in a courtyard outside the former Tony Clement Center for Education in West Hill.
Williams was left paralyzed from the chest down.
Soares faces a June 23 primary challenge from Democrat Matthew Toporowski,
who emailed the Times Union a statement on Soares’ new position.
“This is a reactionary move to remedy a history of regressive policies,” Toporowski said. “Taking a position now is not proactive and progressive leadership. Soares waited two full days and then only condemned George Floyd’s killing only after there was property damage. And now he seeks to capitalize on this movement calling for a special prosecutor law to cover his own tracks of failing to call for one in the Ellazar Williams’ case. David Soares is not being a leader, nor is he being an advocate for this community. He is a politician capitalizing on a moment of pain in the community. It’s insulting.”