For those of you following the story of the incident of apparent gay-bashing by both citizens and police on South Goodman by Monroe a month or so ago, the results are in. It appears that Police Chief Moore’s investigation has revealed some potential violations to rules by officers:
RPD Concludes Investigations Into Alleged ‘Gay-Bashing’ Incident – 13WHAM.com
Police Chief David Moore said the internal investigation found “sufficient areas of concerns relative to possible violations of departmental rules and regulations” by several officers. Moore said the officers in question remain on duty pending a final decision by his office regarding any possible sanction.
I don’t want to jump down anyone’s throat about this, but why are they still on the street if they’ve violated police procedure regulations? It certainly seems like the Rochester Police Department is taking this seriously enough and responding to the public outcry enough to have a serious investigation that has turned up potential problems, why does it stop there?
There are lots of nuances that we don’t yet know. What were these violations, and how serious were they? What repercussions have there been for other officers who’ve violated the same policies?
I’d like to think that they’re seriously investigating this problem and not just giving someone a slap on the wrist for some silly infraction just to say they did something. Such concerns could be dispelled by revealing the nature of the violations. But at the same time, cops do have a union and that union is going to fight for due process; if they haven’t been formally notified of the violations, then telling the public would be poisoning the well for those cops, which might potentially be an actionable offense against them.
The Channel 13 news item I linked to doesn’t contain that much information. Perhaps that’s the fault of television news, or perhaps there wasn’t that much information provided. But it seems to me that if you don’t have something concrete to report, you’re better off not reporting at all.
Technorati Tags: Rochester Police Department, Crime, Gay Bashing, Intolerance, Prejudice, Hate Crimes, David Moore, Police Chief
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