Posted: Wednesday, 17 June 2009 11:39AM
The People Need To Know Now
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Our questions must continue.
Lackawanna County District Attorney Andy Jarbola’s public explanation about what happened when Scranton police shot and killed Brenda Williams only goes so far.
During a press conference Monday, Jarbola called last month’s shooting justified and said he would file no criminal charges against officers. Jarbola also said that the mental health system failed Williams, a 52-year-old mentally ill Air Force veteran.
Police are part of the mental health system.
So if the mental health system failed Williams, police failed Williams.
Jarbola didn’t quite put it that way, though.
The DA also messed up the timeline for the shooting, saying that police arrived at Williams’ North Scranton apartment around 10 p.m., spending about an hour there while Williams walked around naked and ranting and disobeying orders to turn down the television.
So police turned it down for her.
Then the cops unplugged the set.
That’s no way to treat a paranoid schizophrenic.
Jarbola called me yesterday before I went on the air to tell me that he was mistaken and that police first went to the home of Williams’ neighbors who had complained. Cops arrived at Williams’ apartment about 10:40 p.m., he said.
Police spent less than a half-hour there before opening fire, he said.
If the DA is confused at his own press conference, who can be blamed for having a hard time following this fatal storyline?
The only way to get a clear picture of what happened is by reading the Pennsylvania State Police report on their investigation into the shooting.
But Jarbola said he won’t release the complete PSP report. Nor will PSP release the report. Nor will Scranton Police Chief Dave Elliot, who yesterday on “Corbett” called the report “internal.”
Let’s get external.
Let’s open up details of a tragedy that must be studied by everybody who cares in any way for or about people who are mentally ill. Let’s learn from the sad loss of Brenda Williams and turn the lurid details of her demise into a lesson from which we can draw strength.
Without the report we have no real way to tell what happened. We have no way to read the words of the four officers involved to see how they perceived what happened in that cramped apartment where Williams died with a knife in her hand.
A source in the DA’s office said that Jarbola has turned the entire PSP report over to members of the Williams family. Family members could release the report, the source said.
Yes, they could, indeed, release the report.
But that’s not the point.
If Jarbola released the PSP report to any member of the public, including Williams’ mother, brother or any other family member, he has relinquished any and all confidentiality.
Jarbola is likely just extending a courtesy to PSP. He should want to extend the same courtesy to the people he is elected to serve.
We have a right to know because an overriding public interest exists in the details of how Williams died.
Fighting for the release of this information is worth going to court.
We must also obtain the complete report when the current Scranton Police Department internal investigation into whether officers followed department policy is completed.
Chief Elliot said on “Corbett” yesterday that he was rewriting the 2000 department policy on dealing with the mentally ill.
That’s a start.
So is the task force that Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty said yesterday on “Corbett” that he is putting together.
But we need to know the whole truth - what police did right and what police did wrong.
Will we have to wait to see the PSP report as part of the docket in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Williams’ family as part of their pursuit of justice?
For everybody’s sake I hope not.
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