Elections 2007: The editorial board speaks out
As surely as the sun comes up in the morning and bakes the drought-stricken city of Riverside, the Press Enterprise's editorial board has decided to preach to the candidates and their supporters about negative campaign tactics. The article isn't very specific on which negative tactics it is concerned about even as those tactics have been experienced to one degree or another by nearly every candidate running for election in the four city wards that are up for grabs this year. One reason for that may be because in reality, there's been scant news coverage of what's been going on outside Ward One regarding the election, let alone the more negative aspects of the campaigning. If it hasn't allegedly happened to one city council candidate running in Ward One whose been endorsed by the Press Enterprise, then you probably haven't read about it.
The editorial raises some issues and some questions.
(excerpt)
Just as negative campaigning turns off voters, vitriolic campaigns deter good people from running for public office. Why pursue public service and invest countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars when the only guarantee is that an opponent or nameless blogger will smear your good name?
There are 16 days left in Riverside's mail-in election. Candidates should use that time to lift the campaign's tone from the gutter and have a civil discussion about the issues that truly affect residents.
The editorial raises valid points including the question above as to why would people want to run for office if what they'll receive in return is negative treatment by their opponents or others. But what the editorial fails to address is the role that its publication has played in providing unequal coverage of this negative treatment and even worse, its apparent contention that the responsibility of all this negative treatment lies on the shoulders of one of the candidates, Letitia Pepper who among other things, is apparently the head of a consortium of local bloggers that she can unleash or call off at her leisure. That's how one reporter from this newspaper saw it when she wrote a piece on the nasty emails and blog postings flying around the internet.
At no place in that same news article on nasty campaign tactics, were there any responses from or any comments made about similar actions to call off the bloggers and emailers by other Ward One candidates like Mike Gardner and Derek Thesier. The more sensible thing than blaming one individual for that conduct would have been to ask every political candidate running in this election what they thought about what was going on because as has been stated, it's apparently happening in all the council races not just Ward One.
Also not asked to call off the "local bloggers" in that same news article was Councilman Dom Betro even though some of the unnamed commenters writing nasty postings about other candidates online have been calling themselves Betro supporters.
Apparently, Pepper is being held to a separate standard than the three male candidates in her Ward race.
It doesn't help that the authors of the articles themselves seemed to hold Pepper responsible for all that conduct and wondered out loud( through what journalism advisers call "editorializing") about her "failure" to call these bloggers off of Betro. But as mentioned above, there was nothing in the article about Gardner or Thesier being asked let alone apparently required to provide an explanation for any similar "failures" on their parts.
And there's been no articles written by the Press Enterprise about the mud slinging being done in the Ward Three and Ward Five races, including nasty innuendo about candidates William "Rusty" Bailey and Donna Doty Michalka. And yes, even Pepper has been on the receiving end of nasty rhetoric, but the Press Enterprise is too busy treating her as the sole instigator to write about that either.
What's been written about Bailey and Michalka would be more than enough to scare many future candidates off. But the newspaper has been fairly silent on what they have faced. Why is that?
As a result of all this, this editorial which hits a few of its points very well just appears to be more of the same when it could have been a powerful mechanism to address the mudslinging that has been going on this election season. But it's hard for readers to relate to editorials when the news sections of that same newspaper have failed to lay the foundation through their articles for those editorials to gather their information from.
So far, what the editorial board has also shown is that it is awfully quiet when city council members including those up for election behave badly on the dais including Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison who can hardly even run a meeting without calling for someone's arrest or removal. What the newspaper has instead done is served as a staunch advocate for Betro and fought his battles for him while ignoring what other city council candidates have faced in other wards.
It's been fairly quiet about Councilman Steve Adams' personal attack of a Ward Seven resident at a recent political forum which had him calling this individual a liar before he could even take his seat though it was vocal about the controversy involving a newsletter coming out of his office.
There's also been a lot of quiet surrounding the alleged behavior of Betro towards several activists who protested eminent domain at the epicenter of where the city had exercised it downtown, as well as the ethics complaint that was filed in relation to it. That story was relegated to a brief under the city government section and received no response from the newspaper's editorial board so far.
I don't know about the editorial board but this "blogger" has already written pretty much about mudslinging in this year's elections. As for "civil" discussions, they are taking place throughout Riverside. Aric Isom's candidate forum at Back to the Grind was one such venue and there have been others not covered in the Press Enterprise, but that newspaper only appears interested in the election when the mud is flying or someone is stomping out of a public event in a huff.
It's a shame because things were different back in the day when Howard H. Hays, Jr. and his family ran the newspaper which was at the time, one of the few left in the country that was still family owned. Belo Enterprises and other syndicates owned by major corporations were buying up more and more media outlets to add to their media empires. Several years ago, the Press Enterprise became the latest casualty when it was purchased by Belo Enterprises, a corporation based in Texas.
And as a result, so has its coverage of the 2007 city council elections.
As both sides prepare for the trial of a former San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputy, the videotaped version of his shooting of an airman last year is expected to its centerpiece.
An article published in the Los Angeles Times stated that although the prosecutors believe the depiction of the shooting that's by now been seen around the world is a strong piece of evidence to prove that Ivory J. Webb committed a crime when he shot and wounded Elio Carrion. But whereas similar video tapes have produced enough of a case for indictment, they often do not provide enough evidence for conviction.
(excerpt)
We know historically that documentary film is dominated by the voice — that we're very prone to follow what it is that we are being told about what we are seeing," said Michael Renov, a documentary scholar at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.
This especially could be true about the video recording in Webb's trial, and the battle between the prosecution and defense: "The lawyer gets to provide the voice-over," he said.
After watching the video of the Chino shooting, Renov drew a parallel to Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film "Rashomon." In that famous Japanese film, a single event was shown from different perspectives and narrated by different characters, who each gave plausible explanations of what had transpired.
The low lighting, scant detail and shaky camera in the Chino shooting footage, Renov said, could play into the personal fears of members of the jury as they try to put themselves in Webb's shoes to determine whether he committed a crime.
"It's all dark, it's murky, it's hard to know what's going on," Renov said. "The less clear-cut the image ... the more possibilities there are for creating a compelling narrative that can help make the case you want it to make."
The Press Enterprise is beginning to publishing letters in its Readers' Forum by people praising different candidates in the city council elections on its Web site. Previously similar letters that were published in the newspaper were not posted online.
Letters:
May 20
May 19
Conservative columnist Heather MacDonald gave the following admonition in her latest piece to cool it LAPD bashers in response to the reaction to the May Day incident including by those in her own profession who were hit by batons and shot by less lethal munitions. Like most of those defending the actions of the Los Angeles Police Department, MacDonald is an opponent of Special Order 40, which prohibits the LAPD's officers from reporting information on undocumented immigrants to the federal agencies.
Her column raises interesting issues, even if her information including that involving the Rampart neighborhood's response to the scandal in its midst which was very mixed is inaccurate, but it's a given that if MacDonald had been reporting on the MacArthur Park rally and had her wrist broken by an LAPD officer who violated an agreement in place between the department and journalists enacted in 2002, she would probably be their most vocal opponent right now. Being assaulted by police officers has been an amazing mechanism for the transformation from unabashed supporter of law enforcement to cynical critic for people, including journalists who faced similar treatment by the LAPD in 2000. After all, there are FOX news journalists actually suing the agency right now. Who would ever think they would see any of them doing that before seeing ice freeze in Hell?
(excerpt)
The LAPD's usual scourges should get out and see some real policing. They should talk to officers and educate themselves about the organization's constant efforts to partner with the community in fighting crime. The transparency and accountability that Chief William J. Bratton introduced after he took over in 2002 have made the department a national model. Crime reporters in Los Angeles don't know how good they've got it with a department that actually returns phone calls and opens its doors to the media.
However deplorable the May Day episode, it has been blown way out of proportion, in part by people with a financial interest in fanning passions over the incident. Even without the incessant media coverage of that evening's events, there is no question that the department would have reacted as strongly to prevent a reoccurrence. The salient feature of the MacArthur Park breakdown was not its routine nature but rather its rarity.
Maybe while MacDonald's at it, she should tell the federal monitor overseeing the police department to cool it as well as well as the U. S. District judge who despite fairly intense political pressure extended the LAPD's reform process last year. The LAPD has made strides under its latest round of reform under the federal consent decree but the fact that this five-year agreement is going into its seventh year and is now set to expire in 2009 at the earliest, makes it abundantly clear that it has its ongoing struggles as well. And this latest incident caught on video cameras is one example of that.
It's forcing an examination of the LAPD of how its officers are supervised and trained and that's the way it should be. But one way to understand what struggles that the LAPD has been undergoing over and over is to read Joe Frederick's book, To Protect and To Serve which is a fairly exhaustive but compelling historical examination of the LAPD.
In the Orange County Register, Black leaders demand an end to racial profiling at a forum where community members and law enforcement representatives gathered to discuss this serious problem and its impact on people and policing.
(excerpt)
Melissa Carew has two sons fighting in Iraq.
But that's not what keeps her up at night.
She worries whether they can survive being stopped by local police when they come home.
"It's sad that I have to tell my sons that every time they go out that they fit the description and they should be scared of you," said Carew, 47, as she addressed a dozen local police chiefs and Sheriff Mike Carona at a Saturday forum on racial profiling at the Christ Our Redeemer AME Church in Irvine.
One by one, in a seemingly never-ending stream that flowed for more than eight hours, blacks living in Orange County stood up at the church and told the police chiefs stories of being harassed during traffic stops.
A black police officer told about being stopped because of a bad license-plate light bulb. Another woman complained that a police officer asked whether she had ever been in jail during a routine speeding stop. Others were stopped frequently while driving older cars in affluent neighborhoods. Many said police made U-turns when they saw a black driver and pulled them over.
Even two local City Council members related stories of tough – and unequal – treatment by local police officers.
"You can't hear this testimony and not be touched," said Irvine Police Chief Dave Maggard to the audience. Despite much progress in recent years with diversity training, all the police chiefs said there is more to do to make all taxpayers feel that they are treated equally by police.
Carona took notes during the testimony and addressed each complaint specifically, saying to the crowd, "I get it."
After listening to a day's worth of testimony about experiences that probably expand years, hopefully, Carona did "get it" and is not just one more of a list of police agency leaders who said that and then do nothing. And as this forum showed like others have shown, it is African-Americans from different backgrounds who are finding themselves pulled over by officers for allegedly fitting into a profile that is much more narrow in definition.
Police officers who are Black are often racially profiled, sometimes by their fellow employees if it's a large-sized agency. And off-duty Black officers who have decided to assist their White colleagues in need, have been killed or experienced serious injuries for their efforts in several cities when White officers have profiled them as criminals.
In an essay written in an anthology on racism, Black and Latino officers working in their agency's narcotics division said that the number one fear they faced on the job was that they wouldn't be shot by a criminal but by someone who wore the same badge that they did.
Carew herself said that when she worked in an emergency room, police officers treated her much differently than when they saw her driving down the streets. That's also a common story told by those who may be viewed as nonthreatening by officers in one context and profiled in another.
In Carona's favor is that unlike many chiefs or sheriffs who attend forums like these, he didn't immediately jump into a defensive mode and engage in the common practice of circling the wagons around the issue. But what does he plan to do about it, is what's truly important, not just what he says.
One thing that Orange County might be seeing in its future is a civilian review board to handle complaints including those of racial profiling. The Board of Supervisors is currently examining a proposal on this issue in response to several high-profile incidents of serious misconduct in the Orange County Sheriff's Department.
And in New York City, what do you do if you're two New York City Police Department officers and you got caught not breaking up a drug den, but robbing it? You claim that you were trying to stop terrorism, according to this article published in the New York Daily News.
Officers Hector Alvarez and Miguel Castillo were arrested and have been charged with multiple felonies in connection with their actions, because apparently no one really believed their story.
(excerpt)
Alvarez and Castillo, who both joined the NYPD in 2005 and earn about $43,000 a year, drove to Rutherford, N.J., early Friday after getting a tip from an acquaintance that drugs and cash were stashed in a home there, law enforcement sources said.
Wearing business suits and armed with burglary tools, the bungling duo tried to talk their way into the home with the aim of stealing the contraband, the sources said.
A neighbor grew suspicious when Alvarez and Castillo began fighting with a resident, authorities said yesterday.
Aware of the shady goings-on at the home, the neighbor asked the well-dressed pair if they were federal drug agents, sources said.
"As the two officers attempted to flee the altercation, the resident asked who they were," Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said in a statement yesterday. "The officers told the resident that they were police officers on 'official business' and were conducting an investigation relative to 'terrorism.'"
The neighbor asked the officers to remain at the scene until local police arrived. But Alvarez and Castillo refused and fled, prosecutors said.
The neighbor passed along their license plate number to local cops, who tracked the pair down minutes later, the sources said.
The NYPD officers initially tried to pass themselves off as civilians, the sources added.
But when they were pressed, they admitted they were cops and claimed they were conducting an undercover narcotics operation, the sources said.
The editorial raises some issues and some questions.
(excerpt)
Just as negative campaigning turns off voters, vitriolic campaigns deter good people from running for public office. Why pursue public service and invest countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars when the only guarantee is that an opponent or nameless blogger will smear your good name?
There are 16 days left in Riverside's mail-in election. Candidates should use that time to lift the campaign's tone from the gutter and have a civil discussion about the issues that truly affect residents.
The editorial raises valid points including the question above as to why would people want to run for office if what they'll receive in return is negative treatment by their opponents or others. But what the editorial fails to address is the role that its publication has played in providing unequal coverage of this negative treatment and even worse, its apparent contention that the responsibility of all this negative treatment lies on the shoulders of one of the candidates, Letitia Pepper who among other things, is apparently the head of a consortium of local bloggers that she can unleash or call off at her leisure. That's how one reporter from this newspaper saw it when she wrote a piece on the nasty emails and blog postings flying around the internet.
At no place in that same news article on nasty campaign tactics, were there any responses from or any comments made about similar actions to call off the bloggers and emailers by other Ward One candidates like Mike Gardner and Derek Thesier. The more sensible thing than blaming one individual for that conduct would have been to ask every political candidate running in this election what they thought about what was going on because as has been stated, it's apparently happening in all the council races not just Ward One.
Also not asked to call off the "local bloggers" in that same news article was Councilman Dom Betro even though some of the unnamed commenters writing nasty postings about other candidates online have been calling themselves Betro supporters.
Apparently, Pepper is being held to a separate standard than the three male candidates in her Ward race.
It doesn't help that the authors of the articles themselves seemed to hold Pepper responsible for all that conduct and wondered out loud( through what journalism advisers call "editorializing") about her "failure" to call these bloggers off of Betro. But as mentioned above, there was nothing in the article about Gardner or Thesier being asked let alone apparently required to provide an explanation for any similar "failures" on their parts.
And there's been no articles written by the Press Enterprise about the mud slinging being done in the Ward Three and Ward Five races, including nasty innuendo about candidates William "Rusty" Bailey and Donna Doty Michalka. And yes, even Pepper has been on the receiving end of nasty rhetoric, but the Press Enterprise is too busy treating her as the sole instigator to write about that either.
What's been written about Bailey and Michalka would be more than enough to scare many future candidates off. But the newspaper has been fairly silent on what they have faced. Why is that?
As a result of all this, this editorial which hits a few of its points very well just appears to be more of the same when it could have been a powerful mechanism to address the mudslinging that has been going on this election season. But it's hard for readers to relate to editorials when the news sections of that same newspaper have failed to lay the foundation through their articles for those editorials to gather their information from.
So far, what the editorial board has also shown is that it is awfully quiet when city council members including those up for election behave badly on the dais including Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison who can hardly even run a meeting without calling for someone's arrest or removal. What the newspaper has instead done is served as a staunch advocate for Betro and fought his battles for him while ignoring what other city council candidates have faced in other wards.
It's been fairly quiet about Councilman Steve Adams' personal attack of a Ward Seven resident at a recent political forum which had him calling this individual a liar before he could even take his seat though it was vocal about the controversy involving a newsletter coming out of his office.
There's also been a lot of quiet surrounding the alleged behavior of Betro towards several activists who protested eminent domain at the epicenter of where the city had exercised it downtown, as well as the ethics complaint that was filed in relation to it. That story was relegated to a brief under the city government section and received no response from the newspaper's editorial board so far.
I don't know about the editorial board but this "blogger" has already written pretty much about mudslinging in this year's elections. As for "civil" discussions, they are taking place throughout Riverside. Aric Isom's candidate forum at Back to the Grind was one such venue and there have been others not covered in the Press Enterprise, but that newspaper only appears interested in the election when the mud is flying or someone is stomping out of a public event in a huff.
It's a shame because things were different back in the day when Howard H. Hays, Jr. and his family ran the newspaper which was at the time, one of the few left in the country that was still family owned. Belo Enterprises and other syndicates owned by major corporations were buying up more and more media outlets to add to their media empires. Several years ago, the Press Enterprise became the latest casualty when it was purchased by Belo Enterprises, a corporation based in Texas.
And as a result, so has its coverage of the 2007 city council elections.
As both sides prepare for the trial of a former San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputy, the videotaped version of his shooting of an airman last year is expected to its centerpiece.
An article published in the Los Angeles Times stated that although the prosecutors believe the depiction of the shooting that's by now been seen around the world is a strong piece of evidence to prove that Ivory J. Webb committed a crime when he shot and wounded Elio Carrion. But whereas similar video tapes have produced enough of a case for indictment, they often do not provide enough evidence for conviction.
(excerpt)
We know historically that documentary film is dominated by the voice — that we're very prone to follow what it is that we are being told about what we are seeing," said Michael Renov, a documentary scholar at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.
This especially could be true about the video recording in Webb's trial, and the battle between the prosecution and defense: "The lawyer gets to provide the voice-over," he said.
After watching the video of the Chino shooting, Renov drew a parallel to Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film "Rashomon." In that famous Japanese film, a single event was shown from different perspectives and narrated by different characters, who each gave plausible explanations of what had transpired.
The low lighting, scant detail and shaky camera in the Chino shooting footage, Renov said, could play into the personal fears of members of the jury as they try to put themselves in Webb's shoes to determine whether he committed a crime.
"It's all dark, it's murky, it's hard to know what's going on," Renov said. "The less clear-cut the image ... the more possibilities there are for creating a compelling narrative that can help make the case you want it to make."
The Press Enterprise is beginning to publishing letters in its Readers' Forum by people praising different candidates in the city council elections on its Web site. Previously similar letters that were published in the newspaper were not posted online.
Letters:
May 20
May 19
Conservative columnist Heather MacDonald gave the following admonition in her latest piece to cool it LAPD bashers in response to the reaction to the May Day incident including by those in her own profession who were hit by batons and shot by less lethal munitions. Like most of those defending the actions of the Los Angeles Police Department, MacDonald is an opponent of Special Order 40, which prohibits the LAPD's officers from reporting information on undocumented immigrants to the federal agencies.
Her column raises interesting issues, even if her information including that involving the Rampart neighborhood's response to the scandal in its midst which was very mixed is inaccurate, but it's a given that if MacDonald had been reporting on the MacArthur Park rally and had her wrist broken by an LAPD officer who violated an agreement in place between the department and journalists enacted in 2002, she would probably be their most vocal opponent right now. Being assaulted by police officers has been an amazing mechanism for the transformation from unabashed supporter of law enforcement to cynical critic for people, including journalists who faced similar treatment by the LAPD in 2000. After all, there are FOX news journalists actually suing the agency right now. Who would ever think they would see any of them doing that before seeing ice freeze in Hell?
(excerpt)
The LAPD's usual scourges should get out and see some real policing. They should talk to officers and educate themselves about the organization's constant efforts to partner with the community in fighting crime. The transparency and accountability that Chief William J. Bratton introduced after he took over in 2002 have made the department a national model. Crime reporters in Los Angeles don't know how good they've got it with a department that actually returns phone calls and opens its doors to the media.
However deplorable the May Day episode, it has been blown way out of proportion, in part by people with a financial interest in fanning passions over the incident. Even without the incessant media coverage of that evening's events, there is no question that the department would have reacted as strongly to prevent a reoccurrence. The salient feature of the MacArthur Park breakdown was not its routine nature but rather its rarity.
Maybe while MacDonald's at it, she should tell the federal monitor overseeing the police department to cool it as well as well as the U. S. District judge who despite fairly intense political pressure extended the LAPD's reform process last year. The LAPD has made strides under its latest round of reform under the federal consent decree but the fact that this five-year agreement is going into its seventh year and is now set to expire in 2009 at the earliest, makes it abundantly clear that it has its ongoing struggles as well. And this latest incident caught on video cameras is one example of that.
It's forcing an examination of the LAPD of how its officers are supervised and trained and that's the way it should be. But one way to understand what struggles that the LAPD has been undergoing over and over is to read Joe Frederick's book, To Protect and To Serve which is a fairly exhaustive but compelling historical examination of the LAPD.
In the Orange County Register, Black leaders demand an end to racial profiling at a forum where community members and law enforcement representatives gathered to discuss this serious problem and its impact on people and policing.
(excerpt)
Melissa Carew has two sons fighting in Iraq.
But that's not what keeps her up at night.
She worries whether they can survive being stopped by local police when they come home.
"It's sad that I have to tell my sons that every time they go out that they fit the description and they should be scared of you," said Carew, 47, as she addressed a dozen local police chiefs and Sheriff Mike Carona at a Saturday forum on racial profiling at the Christ Our Redeemer AME Church in Irvine.
One by one, in a seemingly never-ending stream that flowed for more than eight hours, blacks living in Orange County stood up at the church and told the police chiefs stories of being harassed during traffic stops.
A black police officer told about being stopped because of a bad license-plate light bulb. Another woman complained that a police officer asked whether she had ever been in jail during a routine speeding stop. Others were stopped frequently while driving older cars in affluent neighborhoods. Many said police made U-turns when they saw a black driver and pulled them over.
Even two local City Council members related stories of tough – and unequal – treatment by local police officers.
"You can't hear this testimony and not be touched," said Irvine Police Chief Dave Maggard to the audience. Despite much progress in recent years with diversity training, all the police chiefs said there is more to do to make all taxpayers feel that they are treated equally by police.
Carona took notes during the testimony and addressed each complaint specifically, saying to the crowd, "I get it."
After listening to a day's worth of testimony about experiences that probably expand years, hopefully, Carona did "get it" and is not just one more of a list of police agency leaders who said that and then do nothing. And as this forum showed like others have shown, it is African-Americans from different backgrounds who are finding themselves pulled over by officers for allegedly fitting into a profile that is much more narrow in definition.
Police officers who are Black are often racially profiled, sometimes by their fellow employees if it's a large-sized agency. And off-duty Black officers who have decided to assist their White colleagues in need, have been killed or experienced serious injuries for their efforts in several cities when White officers have profiled them as criminals.
In an essay written in an anthology on racism, Black and Latino officers working in their agency's narcotics division said that the number one fear they faced on the job was that they wouldn't be shot by a criminal but by someone who wore the same badge that they did.
Carew herself said that when she worked in an emergency room, police officers treated her much differently than when they saw her driving down the streets. That's also a common story told by those who may be viewed as nonthreatening by officers in one context and profiled in another.
In Carona's favor is that unlike many chiefs or sheriffs who attend forums like these, he didn't immediately jump into a defensive mode and engage in the common practice of circling the wagons around the issue. But what does he plan to do about it, is what's truly important, not just what he says.
One thing that Orange County might be seeing in its future is a civilian review board to handle complaints including those of racial profiling. The Board of Supervisors is currently examining a proposal on this issue in response to several high-profile incidents of serious misconduct in the Orange County Sheriff's Department.
And in New York City, what do you do if you're two New York City Police Department officers and you got caught not breaking up a drug den, but robbing it? You claim that you were trying to stop terrorism, according to this article published in the New York Daily News.
Officers Hector Alvarez and Miguel Castillo were arrested and have been charged with multiple felonies in connection with their actions, because apparently no one really believed their story.
(excerpt)
Alvarez and Castillo, who both joined the NYPD in 2005 and earn about $43,000 a year, drove to Rutherford, N.J., early Friday after getting a tip from an acquaintance that drugs and cash were stashed in a home there, law enforcement sources said.
Wearing business suits and armed with burglary tools, the bungling duo tried to talk their way into the home with the aim of stealing the contraband, the sources said.
A neighbor grew suspicious when Alvarez and Castillo began fighting with a resident, authorities said yesterday.
Aware of the shady goings-on at the home, the neighbor asked the well-dressed pair if they were federal drug agents, sources said.
"As the two officers attempted to flee the altercation, the resident asked who they were," Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said in a statement yesterday. "The officers told the resident that they were police officers on 'official business' and were conducting an investigation relative to 'terrorism.'"
The neighbor asked the officers to remain at the scene until local police arrived. But Alvarez and Castillo refused and fled, prosecutors said.
The neighbor passed along their license plate number to local cops, who tracked the pair down minutes later, the sources said.
The NYPD officers initially tried to pass themselves off as civilians, the sources added.
But when they were pressed, they admitted they were cops and claimed they were conducting an undercover narcotics operation, the sources said.
Labels: City elections, civilian review spreads, officer-involved shootings
posted by Five Before Midnight | 11:19 PM
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