Anyone who feels confident in Durham’s city officials investigating themselves, raise your hand. Hmmm, I don’t see many hands up in the air. Anyone with a lick of objectivity knows something smells in Durham. The stink came out in grand style in the Duke lacrosse case and our police department and district attorney’s corrupt handling of the case. Now we have a cop sex scandal involving prostitutes and we think the police department is competent to give us the truth about it?
Even backers of Bill Bell, who stood by like a sphinx while the PD railroaded three Duke students on the word of an “escort” and “sex worker,” feel something is rotten in the Bull City, making point similar to the one I made yesterday:
“For a long time, officers have been telling us they couldn’t arrest prostitutes because they inform on other people,” said Whitley, a Harvard Avenue resident prominent in Mayor Bill Bell’s just-concluded re-election campaign. “But when I’m reading the story, I’m thinking there might have been another motive, too: If they get arrested, somebody might say something.”
Whitley added that he’s “always thought it was mysterious that on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, prostitutes could have free reign on our streets and no one would move against them.”
A question Mr. Whitley: Wny did you support the status quo, for heaven’s sake? Did you think Durham would get a different outcome by backing the same tired slate that has done nothing to jolt Durham out of its sleazy rut?
Chief Jose Lopez has refused to release the names of the police officers being investigated, saying, “I will have to decline forwarding the information at this time due to the fact that such release could compromise an ongoing investigation.” But Ray Gronberg of The Herald-Sun points out that state open-records laws seem not to allow that:
Area lawyers immediately criticized the chief’s decision, noting that state law specifies that, among other things, the names of city employees and the date of their “most recent promotion, demotion, transfer, suspension, separation or other change in position classification” is a public record.
I say bring in the Feds, bring in the state, bring in Andy and Barney. Anybody but our own people. They’ll just cover the whole mess up.
