NY TIMES ON FORD STREET INCIDENT

From The New York Times, "Two Gunshots on A Summer Night," by Walt Bogdanich & Glenn Silber, November 24, 2013, here:

(snip)
Sheriff Shoar describes himself as a disciplinarian. “I have terminated, demoted, suspended and reprimanded many subordinates over the years,” he wrote in his letter to The Times.
At times, though, he has shown a light touch with wayward officers.
Three years before the O’Connell shooting, the sheriff’s office broke up a peaceful graduation party in a predominantly black neighborhood, firing pepper gas, unleashing a police dog, brandishing shotguns and making nine arrests. “If I didn’t know better, I would have thought it was back in the ’60s — the only thing that was missing was a water hose,” said the party’s host, Charlie Gilliam.
Officers later filed a report saying that they were responding to a noise complaint, that they saw open bottles of alcohol, that bottles were thrown at them, and that the dog was unleashed after a young man pushed an officer.
But after internal affairs investigators determined that much of the report was fallacious, prosecutors dropped the charges, and residents received a $275,000 settlement. Sheriff Shoar, however, overruled his internal affairs department’s recommendation that the lieutenant in charge be suspended for three days and that an overly aggressive deputy with a history of misconduct be fired. In the following months, that deputy repeatedly engaged in misconduct before being dismissed.
As for the lieutenant, he would be the district commander on the scene the night Michelle O’Connell died.
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