MAY 2023 - Blues Vol 39 No. 5

AROUND THE COUNTRY

AROUND THE COUNTRY GREENFIELD, Mass. — The Greenfield police resumed 24- hour service as of Sunday. Patrols and responses by the Greenfield Police Department had been reduced due to staffing shortages and budgetary constraints since March 1. Massachusetts State Police stepped in with coverage between the hours of 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. Greenfield police announced on the department’s Facebook page Sunday that 24-hour coverage would return, albeit with potential delays in responses due to continued staffing shortages. “We are happy to announce as of today we are back to serving our community 24 hours a day,” the department wrote. “We would like to thank the Massachusetts State Police for their assistance covering between the hours of 0300-0700 for the past six weeks and their willingness to assist our detectives in the upcoming months.” The Franklin County Sheriff’s Department will assist the Greenfield Police Department with coverage “until we can staff our department to safe levels,” Greenfield police wrote on Facebook. “Due to our continued staffing shortages, you still may experience delays in non-life threatening or non-active property calls for the near future,” the post read. Police Chief Robert Haigh and Mayor Roxann Wedegartner made a surprise announcement about the end of the night shift and an eight-hour gap in service at a Jan. 18 city council meeting. A week later, however, they amended the plan and said Greenfield police will no longer patrol or respond to 911 calls from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. State police set up a mobile command center outside of the Greenfield Police Department’s headquarters on High Street in order to cover the gaps in overnight service. At a March 22 meeting of the city’s Public Safety Commission, four new police recruits were recommended to the mayor to be officially hired. During the meeting, Deputy Chief William Gordon said all four were given conditional offers of employment. At least one recruit, Victor Placinta, already had part-time certification from the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission, and with a waiver for full-time certification, had a chance of being on patrol duty as early as April 1, according to Gordon. Another recruit, Cameron Johnson, already a full-time certified POST officer, was required to go through field training with the Greenfield police. Gordon said he could be “on the road by himself anywhere between four and 12 weeks, depending on the speed of his training.” The path to patrol for the other two recruits will take a little longer. “The other two you probably won’t see on the road for about a year, maybe next January,” Gordon said. A 5,000 federal grant awarded to the city of Greenfield will go toward funding the new hires. yrs. ‘TOP SHOT’ LAPD OFFICER SUES CHIEF, DEPARTMENT OVER SOCIAL MEDIA DEMAND. By Melody Gutierrez Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES — A LAPD officer, whose sharp-shooter social media posts drew widespread attention after she was involved in a fatal shooting, filed a discrimination and retaliation lawsuit Tuesday against Police Chief Michel Moore and the department. LAPD Officer Toni McBride alleges that Moore blocked her promotions because she refused to remove from her social media feeds videos of her at shooting competitions or training at firing ranges. In the lawsuit filed in federal court, McBride claims that Moore told her that she had to delete her social media accounts or “he would destroy her career.” McBride, who is seeking more than million in damages, has been on medical leave since November due to “severe physical symptoms caused by and exacerbated by the stress,” according to the lawsuit. A LAPD spokesperson declined to comment, citing pending litigation. McBride’s social media posts garnered attention in 2020 after she shot a 38-year-old man holding a box cutter six times, killing him. McBride and her partner had been responding to a collision on San Pedro Street near East 32nd Street involving several badly injured motorists whose vehicles had been struck by a truck driven by Daniel Hernandez. A toxicology report found Hernandez had methamphetamine in his system at the time. McBride repeatedly commanded Hernandez to drop the weapon, according to videos captured by McBride’s body-camera and by witnesses with smartphones. When Hernandez advanced toward her, she shot him twice, and then fired another two shots when he attempted to get up. Her final two shots came as he was rolling on the ground. After the shooting, McBride told investigators she felt Hernandez posed a risk to bystanders in the area. The Los Angeles Police Commission found McBride broke department policy by continuing to shoot Hernandez during the fatal encounter. The commission found McBride’s first four shots were justified, but her fifth and sixth shots were not. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office cleared McBride of wrongdoing based in part on the “expert opinion” of a controversial police use-of-force consultant. Bonta’s office took over the review of the shooting after former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey recused herself. McBride’s father, Jamie Mc- Bride, is one of nine directors of the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file officers in labor and discipline issues. The L.A. police union has raised money for Lacey’s campaigns. The younger McBride earned “Top Shot” in the LAPD police academy and was the youngest in her class when she graduated at 20 years old, according to her lawsuit. She said in the lawsuit that she has competed — and won — target shooting competitions all over the country, which she regularly chronicled on her social media accounts. In the lawsuit, McBride’s attorney said it was not the Hernandez shooting that caused the police chief to block McBride’s career advancement opportunities last year. “Chief Moore told Officer Mc- Bride that he wanted her to cease posting videos on social media,” according to the lawsuit. “He said that Officer McBride needed to ‘choose between being an LAPD officer’ or posting social media videos.” McBride contends her posts are “virtually identical to dozens of videos regularly posted by male officers. But when it comes to Officer McBride, Chief Moore told her he didn’t like the ‘image they present,’” according to the lawsuit. Have a news story you’d like to share with The BLUES? Send it to: bluespdmag@gmail.com. 54 The BLUES The BLUES 55