This Week in the Mercury
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Politics What Starts on Blogtown Ends on Blogtown
Posted by Amy J. Ruiz on Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 4:49 PM
In response to allegations from Commissioner Randy Leonard that cops were spreading info about his daughter on the Internets (i.e., on the Mercury's site), Police Chief Rosie Sizer investigated and documented her findings in a letter to the mayor today.
The police bureau's Internal Affairs Division poked around, "to investigate the possibility of a Police Bureau employee inappropriately accessing and releasing confidential warrant status information from [the Law Enforcement Data System]," Sizer writes. "The investigators can say definitively that no one from the Police Bureau ran Commissioner Leonard's daughter's information through LEDS."
She concludes: "I have not--nor would I condone--anyone in my office leaking information to reporters about Commissioner Leonard's family."
Read the rest here.
2
Sizer knows, and Randy knows and everyone involved in the criminal justice system knows that warrants are issued by the courts and therefore public records. Seeing who accessed LEDS is not going to answer the question of who would know about the warrant. So Sizer's investigation means nothing except that one possible method of accessing the info was not used. Anyone can go to the courthouse here and in Clark county and look up the poor woman's history. Sizer could have done this, anyone in City Hall could have done this, and apparently someone did. So why is Randy whining about confidentiality? Are there other charges that haven't been filed yet that he is worried about? Or secret police files on city council members? Or is Randy just a whiny, paranoid, vindictive politician in the Nixonian style?
The real question about Randy's ranting is " how can you leak what is already public?" If the press did its job we'd get the same info the police would have. The press still hasn't done its work since the reporting is not clear what the timeline and charges actually are. Also, why would the chief of police leak it to the Mercury instead of just going and arresting the daughter?
If it is simply a run of the mill warrant then let's face it - the charges are floating out there and from the "reporting"
here and in the Williamette Week is sounds like she is still out of custody with the cases unresolved.
Someone from the "press" or "police" should ask Mr. Leonard where his daughter is and then law enforcement can go arrest her and process her through the system like any other person and the city can move on. Randy isn't going to be charged for harboring a fugitive or anything like that, but he certainly has it within his power to resolve the issue.
No one will blame whiny Randy for his daughters problems and challenges, but the daughter shouldn't get a free pass just because Rosie and some blogger made Randy cry. At some point, someone from the bureau will still have to cuff her and have her booked. Until that's resolved Randy has a conflict of interest with the bureau and Sam Adams made the right call. I'd say Randy made the right call too by removing his name, but he had to be a whiny little brat about it by blaming Sizer so he shouldn't get any credit.
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