Going 55 in a 35 zone was only the first of Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley’s mistakes last Monday. That in itself would have been a black mark but a tolerable one if she had pulled over and gracefully accepted her ticket when Police Officer Cameron Crisafulli used his lights and sirens.
Instead, as captured by body-worn camera video released under the state Freedom of Information Law, the prosecutor kept driving until reaching her home, phoning Webster Chief of Police Dennis Kohlmeier to “tell [Crisafulli] to leave me alone.” In doing so, Doorley not only tried to get a cop in trouble for doing his duty, but violated the trust that Rochester and the rest of Monroe County has put in her.
Those who pledge to uphold the law have a special responsibility to follow it scrupulously. They are granted a power that’s more than just symbolic — they are given state-sponsored authority over others’ lives. The perception of this authority as legitimate is crucial, and every time that power is abused undermines that legitimacy, not just for that one person but for the system they represent.
At least this incident was a spur-of-the-moment reaction rather than representative of deliberate, long-term prosecutorial misconduct of the sort that has unfortunately become familiar to the public through incidents like prosecutors refusing to turn over exonerating evidence or relying on testimony they know to be false.
Still, this reflexive response on Doorley’s part signals quite clearly how she sees herself in relation to the laws that she’s charged with enforcing: they don’t apply to her. We can’t imagine that she would be particularly understanding if another resident had refused to heed a cop’s lawful order to pull over, regardless of what kind of day the rouge driver had.
Gov. Hochul’s referral to the state Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct is perfectly appropriate; now what’s left to be seen is if the commission has the chops to really pursue a full inquiry after years of languishing. Taking action against an elected DA can help prove to the public that prosecutors, even well-connected ones, do not get a free pass.
Here we also see the utility of police body-worn cameras, which take some of the he-said, she-said out of the equation. In the absence of the video, there would only be competing characterizations of the interaction; prior to its release, Doorley contended, absurdly, that she had called Kohlmeier in order to have the chief assure Crisafulli that she posed no danger to him.
The call makes it clear Doorley was lying to the cop, when she said repeatedly that the reason that she didn’t stop was that she didn’t think that hers was the vehicle he was pursuing. Doorley just didn’t want to have to follow the law.
Hopefully, police departments will begin to as quickly comply with requests for body camera footage even when it doesn’t back up their account of events, so that these can be true tools of accountability as opposed to tools of selective narrative, as they have so often been in over the last few years.
There is no higher demand for those with a badge, whether cops or prosecutors, than accountability for how they use the great power placed in them.