Doing It Right
A member of the Rochester (New York) Police Department was killed Wednesday night. I never worked with him, all of the guys I worked with have long since retired, but members of my extended family knew him. I was not in the RPD, I worked at a neighboring department. The last time RPD lost an officer was in the late 1950s, so it is a rare incident for them.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because after Ferguson people need to know that there are places where the police do things right, and if you read the article you will see that the Rochester PD did things right.
There were four shots fired during the incident, only one of them was from a police weapon. Three people were hit, two by the suspect and the suspect by the partner of the dead officer. The officer returned one round in response to being fired on by the suspect, struck the suspect, and arrested him.
I went to the same police academy that trains RPD officers. This is how we were trained to do the job. I would also note that the Mayor of Rochester and the Chief of Police held press conferences on Thursday to inform the public of what happened in the incident. Rochester has had rocky relations with the minority community for a long time, but they are obviously moving to correct things. Informing the public as quickly as possible is vital to improving relations.
September 6, 2014 4 Comments
