Sergeant Who Charged Virginia Senator With Felonies Called Her Cop Criticism 'Repulsive'

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

A police sergeant in Portsmouth, Virginia, who circumvented local prosecutors to bring highly unusual “injury to a monument” felony charges against a state senator, public defenders and NAACP members previously called the lawmaker’s criticism of his police chief “disgusting” and “repulsive.”

Sgt. Kevin T. McGee of the Portsmouth Police Department’s property crimes unit brought felony charges against 14 people in connection with June 10 damage to a Confederate monument, according to his probable cause summary filed with a magistrate.

The defendants include Louise Lucas, the Democratic Virginia Senate president pro tempore. Lucas previously called on Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene to resign because, Lucas said, Greene “abdicated her responsibility to maintain peace and failed to uphold the law” after protesters knocked down a Confederate statue and seriously injured a demonstrator in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

McGee didn’t like Sen. Lucas’ criticism of his chief. In June, he fired off a heated letter to Portsmouth’s mayor, city council and city manager, saying it was “absolutely disgusting and offensive” to “attempt to place blame on Chief Greene or the men and women of the Portsmouth Police Department or to continue to try to use us as pawns on their political agenda” in connection with protests in which four Confederate statues were beheaded and one was torn down. The city council later voted unanimously to remove the Confederate monument, which was located at a site where enslaved Black Americans were publicly punished on a whipping post.

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/portsmouth-police-confederate-monument-kevin-mcgee-133819307.html

Sounds like rogue cop.

[magicarpet]

1. The thin blue line, don't fuck with the cops or they lash out like the Mafia.

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. Trump has got the police union vote locked up.

Shocking, I know.

[magicarpet]

3. Fascists fondling Fascists because being a Nazi is macho manly and fun.

[riversedge]

4. .Legal experts expressed shock at the lack of due process McGee and the police department afforded t

very long article. Lots of animosity on both sides. But sure looks like to me that the police officer overstepped. IMHO


.......Legal experts expressed shock at the lack of due process McGee and the police department afforded those slapped with felonies. Virginia officers usually secure warrants in the immediate aftermath of an incident, not months down the line.

Steven Benjamin, an attorney in Richmond who used to head the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told The Washington Post the charges were extraordinary. “This is the sort of case that should have been charged, if at all, only after consultation with the commonwealth’s attorney and the presentment of indictments to a grand jury,” he said.

University of Virginia School of Law professor Darryl Brown told the Washingtonian that the charges against Lucas were “a very aggressive law enforcement decision, and one unlikely to result in a conviction.”

City officials made clear they were blindsided by the charges Greene announced on Monday. City Manager L. Pettis Patton wrote in an email to the mayor and city council that Greene had previously informed her that she had a conflict of interest in the investigation. Patton wrote that she was “surprised and troubled” when she learned investigators were still working on the cases and swearing out warrants.