Sheriff to be commended for transparency
In a time of ever-increasing distrust of law enforcement officials, Fayette County residents should have pride in the recent actions of their elected county sheriff.
Jim Custer’s swift and total transparency last week may well have quelled a whole lot of discourse.
When a man came to the county courthouse for a criminal case on Oct. 3, deputies learned he was wanted on a warrant in Allegheny County. They took him into custody, and to the sheriff’s office in the basement for processing.
A bystander video that appeared on social media that evening showed the man on the ground outside the courthouse, with deputies and other law enforcement personnel around him.
Questions flew – as they should – when reports surfaced that the man was hospitalized with a fractured skull. Many speculated he was mistreated.
Custer’s reaction laid those concerns to rest.
He picked up the phone and answered questions, and recognizing that may not be enough, he released video taken in the courthouse basement as the man was being processed, as well as video taken in front of the courthouse.
Not just some of it.
All of it.
From every camera, at every angle.
The footage showed the man initially cooperating with police, then showed him shoving a deputy and fleeing from the basement, up the steps and out of the front entrance of the courthouse.
It showed a deputy who’d run out an emergency entrance in the basement and to the front of the building, raise a Taser to stop the man, and then deploy it when he did not.
It showed the man fall to the ground, and law enforcement officials gather around him, until he was able to sit up and then get into a police vehicle.
It did not show abuse.
According to his family, the man sustained his injuries in the fall outside of the courthouse, after the Taser was used. He was given medical attention, and transferred from a local hospital to a West Virginia facility to receive care for his injuries. He was taken off of a ventilator last week, his mother said, and continues to recover with no memory of what happened.
Given the severity of the man’s injuries, questions about what happened weren’t unwarranted, and the openness with which they were addressed were, we hope, tremendously powerful to those seeking answers.
In an era where questions are often met with defensiveness, Custer’s transparency is to be lauded.
His near-immediate offer to release the video to anyone who wanted to view it was the right thing to do.
Not only does doing so allay public concerns, it also builds and strengthens trust between the community and those who are sworn to protect it.