Why did the Durham Police Department lie for nine days about who made the 911 calls outside the Duke lacrosse party on March 13, 2006? That’s the question that springs from Ray Gronberg’s story in today’s Herald-Sun:
Notes from two detectives show that Durham Police Department officials kept saying publicly they didn’t know who placed the 911 call that launched the Duke lacrosse case long after investigators had identified its source.
One of two strippers who performed at a lacrosse team party, Kim Roberts, owned up to placing the call when she was first questioned by police, during a March 22, 2006, meeting with lead Investigator Ben Himan.
Gronberg’s story shows the active involvement of Deputy Chief Ron Hodge and DPD public information officer Kammie Michael in prolonging the hoax about the phone call. The importance of this misleading information is that it supported, falsely, the story of a racial incident at the house on North Buchanan Boulevard and thereby fueled the subsequent misguided outrage.
One hopes the Whichard commission, when it finally meets after the July 4 holiday, takes note of the handling of this bit of information. It is hard to come away from this story without feeling that the withholding of this information was an instance of intentional lying to the public rather than incompetence.
