http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Churchill-Thevenin-cover-up-stains-troubled-Troy-12505932.php
Churchill: Thevenin cover-up stains troubled Troy police department
Updated 7:27 am, Thursday, January 18, 2018
Troy
Disgraceful and embarrassing.
Those are two adjectives that came to mind after I read the report on the shooting of a black motorist by Troy police.
The report by the Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, released Tuesday, shows that the Troy department is guilty of nothing less than a cover-up — and doing everything in its power to protect one of its own from prosecution.
"Get the f*** out of here."
That's what police at the scene told witnesses to the shooting, according to the state report. The words tell us everything we need to know about how police responded after Sgt. Randall French shot Edson Thevenin eight times through his windshield.
The investigation by Troy police was a sham and a fraud.
Its purpose wasn't uncovering the truth. It was about perpetrating a lie.
The shooting happened around 3:30 a.m. on April 17, 2016, after a drunken Thevenin drove away as French attempted to arrest him. Almost immediately, Thevenin crashed his Honda Civic into a concrete barrier near an entrance to the Collar City Bridge.
French and another officer, Matthew Montanino, pulled in front and back of Thevenin's Honda, blocking him in. As Thevenin attempted to back up, French got out of his patrol car.
French said he fired only after Thevenin shifted directions and pinned him between two cars.
But three paragraphs into Schneiderman's report, French's lie is exposed. His account, the report says, "is contradicted by forensic evidence" proving that French wasn't pinned in place.
It is contradicted by eyewitness accounts, too. But police weren't interested in hearing those, and the report makes clear exactly why.
"You shouldn't have done that," a witness said at the scene. "You didn't have to shoot him."
Thus, the response.
"Get the f*** out of here."
The attorney general's report says Troy police "grossly mishandled" witnesses. It says the department "prejudged the outcome" of its investigation. It says it failed to arrange basic forensic analyses. It says police "overlooked or ignored evidence." The department had to have known French's claim wasn't accurate, but it did its best to hide that inconvenient truth.
How does it get any worse?
Here's how: By rushing the case to a grand jury before the sham of an investigation was even complete, which, of course, is exactly what Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove did.
The inevitable result: No charges against French.
That might have been the right result. The report says there's no conclusive proof that French's use of force was not justified. The officer might have believed his life was in danger.
Yes, Thevenin's car was a weapon. And yes, the 37-year-old Latham man behaved appallingly and criminally the night he died. His drunken driving put people at risk. Fleeing the scene endangered officers.
But nothing Thevenin did justifies how police acted. Nothing Thevenin did justifies ignoring evidence and conducting a sham investigation.
In fact, the response by police suggests they believed they had a problem. If the department honestly thought the shooting was necessary, why not conduct a professional investigation to prove it?
Speaking of unprofessional behavior, the report, in a footnote, mentions how terribly police treated Thevenin's family. Officers at first lied to family members about how Thevenin died and subsequently refused to provide any information at all. Loved ones learned what had happened to their father and husband when the rest of us did — at a press conference.
Makes you wonder: Would a white family be treated with such disrespect? That's assuming, of course, that a white motorist would have been killed in similar circumstances.
My guess: Nope.
The story line keeps repeating. Eric Garner. Freddie Gray. Philando Castile. Troy police are lucky Thevenin's killing didn't bring the harsh glare of national attention.
Some will say Thevenin got what he had coming and anybody who runs from police is knowingly putting his life in danger.
OK, but remember this: A police department that will lie and cover up during one investigation will do the same during others. Any department willing to cross those boundaries will do so repeatedly. It can't be trusted.
And so the Thevenin case is a stain on Troy's police department. It is a stain on Chief John Tedesco, who retired Jan. 12. It is a stain on Abelove, the daft district attorney.
It is even a stain on Mayor Patrick Madden, whose response to the report was deeply disappointing.
"We fundamentally disagree with the attorney general's findings," Madden said in a statement. "We believe the factual inaccuracies and errors contained within the report unfairly put the Troy Police Department in a negative light."
Which factual inaccuracies? Which errors? Madden didn't say.
I'm sorry, mayor, but your response falls short. The only appropriate answer to so damning a report is a vow to finally clean up a police department that so often disgraces its city.
The report proves what was already obvious: Tedesco's replacement should come from outside Troy. And he or she should have a record of cleaning up troubled police departments.
Troy deserves a department worthy of the city, one equal to the many good officers who serve within it — cops who would never tell witnesses to go away.
"Get the f*** out of here."
Disgraceful and embarrassing.
