Aurora Police Chief Daniel Oates did his best to undercut Loree McCormick-Rice’s story of brutality by one of his officers.
“There are issues about Ms. McCormick-Rice’s credibility in this entire matter,” Oates said Monday, announcing that an Incident Review Board had cleared Sgt. Charles DeShazer of wrongdoing in a June confrontation with McCormick-Rice and her 12-year-old daughter.
Right back at ya, Chief.
There are issues about DeShazer’s credibility in this entire matter, too. Especially DeShazer’s lawyer’s insistence that the officer didn’t injure a little girl’s shoulder by taking her to the pavement and forcefully keeping her there.
Oates says “there is no justification … for struggling with a police officer.”
How about when you’re black, and a white cop, working off-duty as a supermarket security guard, calls you the N-word, then orders you to leave the parking lot when you get upset?
How about when you try to return to the lot and the cop blocks you, then puts a 12-year-old kid on the ground for getting out of the car and confronting him?
This is the essence of McCormick- Rice’s charge against DeShazer.
DeShazer denies calling McCormick-Rice and her daughter racial epithets. That and a security video that Oates says shows “the sergeant is struggling on the ground with not one, but two people” is apparently enough for the chief to give his officer a pass. “The nature of our business is that we all … suffer allegations as a result of being good police officers and taking enforcement actions,” Oates said.
The video of what DeShazer did is harsh, regardless of any justification. Grainy images show DeShazer taking Cassidy Rice to the pavement and shoving her back down when she tries to rise. The video shows Cassidy’s mom get up and go to her car to call for help. The cops later take her to the ground.
If this passes for model police work in Aurora, you probably ought to bypass the city next time you need groceries.
DeShazer’s lawyer, Dave Osborne, says a security guard who witnessed what happened backs up his client’s version. Osborne said the security guard says that McCormick-Rice’s testimony in her criminal hearing “was beyond perjury.”
Osborne also claimed that his client didn’t hurt Cassidy Rice’s shoulder while manhandling her.
“Everything I said was the truth,” McCormick-Rice responded. “X-rays don’t lie. And the doctors aren’t lying.”
“We’ll let a federal jury decide,” said McCormick-Rice’s lawyer, David Lane.
The civil suit Lane expects to file in a month will test everyone’s credibility.
Meanwhile, as Oates talks of “reasons to question the public vilification of Sgt. DeShazer and my department by Ms. McCormick-Rice,” there are reasons to question Aurora’s public vilification of McCormick-Rice and her child. The city filed criminal charges against a 51-year-old woman whose modus operandi was food shopping and a 12-year-old whose shoulder was allegedly hurt by a burly cop.
A criminal conviction against McCormick-Rice and Cassidy might have reduced the city’s liability. Now that the city has dropped all criminal charges, the case goes where it should have been to begin with – a suit in civil court.
That doesn’t clean things up the way Aurora City Attorney Charlie Richardson hoped. Rich ardson’s proclamation that “there is … no evidence to suggest that Officer DeShazer did anything inappropriate” simply belies facts. So do Oates’ remarks, if he wants “closure.”
Regardless of who called whom what, this began with DeShazer falsely accusing McCormick-Rice, who has a lung condition, of parking in a handicapped zone without a handicapped sticker. It escalated when DeShazer ordered McCormick-Rice off the property because she got upset at his mistake. It came to a head because DeShazer blocked McCormick-Rice from re-entering the supermarket parking lot. And it ended with a child pinned on the ground while her hysterical mother pleaded for protection from the people she pays to serve and protect.
That may be a lot of things.
Appropriate is not among them.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
