That it ended up being recorded by the school district’s voicemail system was merely fortuitous. That it happened at all, on the other hand, was not.
[Bogota, New Jersey] Sgt. Craig Lynch left the recording, which is expected to be addressed by the Board of Education during a special meeting tonight, when he accidentally dialed a school district phone line with his cellphone after he left the Steen Elementary School principal’s office in August, according to district officials.
“[Expletive] you and the school superintendent and your [expletive] Ph.D. and the entire school district,” he says in the recording. “[Expletive] you. You can’t touch me. You’re not my [expletive] boss. [Expletive] you.”
Lynch was apparently displeased at a decision to terminate an employee. His solution was threatening to ticket everyone at the school.
Much of the recording is of Lynch reiterating what he had told Principal Dayle Santoro in her office after he learned that a former staff member was not rehired by the school board, she said.The threats have left Santoro worried to be in the school building alone, she said.
“He spewed this vitriol and then discussed that he could enter my building at any time and what was I going to do about it,” Santoro said. “He continued to say that he would stand at the corner and write tickets to teachers as they leave if there were any sort of retaliation against him.”
And the district superintendent filed a complaint with the police department’s internal affairs.
In a letter sent to the district last month, Capt. James Sepp acknowledged that “the event did occur” but said the actions of the officer were “justified, legal and or proper.”
“I want you to understand that all complaints are important and none are brushed off or put to the side,” Sepp wrote. “I know that I cannot make your feelings with regards to your incident go away but I do want you to understand that your complaint was investigated thoroughly.”
Damn kind of the cops to acknowledge that “the event did occur,” considering it was recorded. And as has become the way of the world these days, it was also deeply empathetic of Capt. Sepp to offer the district his best tummy rub by acknowledging their feelings. After all, isn’t acknowledging feelings vital to the healing process?
But then there’s the little tidbit in between, the “actions of the officer were ‘justified, legal and or proper.'” And that raises a itty-bitty question. Why?
There’s no “why” to be found here. There’s the conclusion, that it was all good, but there’s no why it’s all good for a cop to engage in a profanity-laden rant to a school principal, for a cop to threaten to abuse his authority, for a cop to tell the principal that there’s nothing she can do about it.
The School Board, also not a favorite of Lynch’s, decided to do what boards typically do when confronted with problems.
“The board finds that the conduct exhibited by Sgt. Lynch was certainly not just, legal and or proper as stated in the internal affairs findings,” Board President Charles Severino said as he read the prepared statement. “Such behavior will not be tolerated by this board. Our utmost priority is to create a school and workplace environment where everyone feels safe and protected and to ensure that any conduct that runs counter to these values is immediately addressed no matter who the offender may be.”
What “not be tolerated” means, exactly, is unclear. The problem, of course, is that schools may occasionally need police assistance. Barring Lynch from the school may be the best solution for one side of the dilemma, but not so much from the other. And then there’s the question of whether they can stop him at all, since he’s got the gun and they, well, don’t.
And what does Sgt. Lynch have to say?
“My record speaks for itself,” Lynch said. “I’ve done nothing but good for this district.”
Then again, most of us have a firm belief that we’re totally wonderful people who do only great things for others. But what about this specific conduct?
Lynch, a 28-year veteran of the department, told the board that Santoro’s account of what happened in August was inaccurate and said he has apologized to her for the incident.
“You weren’t there, you have no idea what happened. In 28 years I’ve never hurt anybody. Nobody has a reason to be intimidated by me,” he said. “If Dayle was intimidated maybe you need to rethink who you have in charge of a building with 200 babies in it.”
It’s almost as if there was no recording of the incident, or that he didn’t specifically threaten to abuse his authority and Principal Teacup was just too emotional to be in charge. But then, irony is a bitch.
“I feel like I’m being harassed,” [Lynch] said. “This matter has been adjudicated and I’ve been exonerated. Why are we still talking about this? At this point it feels personal.”
It would seem that this is exactly the sort of thing that is personal, because Lynch personally engaged in his personal profanity-laced rant personally to the principal he personally threatened. Personally.
So what’s to be done about it, now that the police department has endorsed this conduct after a “thorough investigation” that concluded it was “justified, legal and or proper”?
Vincent Varcadipane, the interim superintendent, said Tuesday night he wants to meet with Lynch and put the situation behind them.
“The bottom line is things happen and we accept that apology,” he said. “We need to establish and build bridges now. We need to get past this and we need to get Bogota to come together as a family.”
Aww. Big group hug. There may be no rationale given for why Lynch’s conduct was totally hunky-dory with the cops, but there’s a pretty obvious explanation for why the superintendent wants to “build bridges.” You see, Sgt. Lynch was right when he said, “there’s nothing you can do about it,” and despite their responsibility to protect the students and employees from a cop willing to abuse his authority, they’ve got nothing to stop him but hugs.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“justified, legal and or proper.”
Just call up a police station, leave that voicemail, and stand at the entrance waving an angry sign at the cops as they leave.
See how long it takes you to get shot.
“justified, legal and or proper.” my arse…
It’s “justified, legal and proper” when it bumps up against the First and Second Rules of Policing. I guess that’s how they can justify this yet turn around and criminally charge a normal peon of doing the same.
Or Newton’s Third Law of Stupidity?
For every stupid there is an equal and opposite stupid?
You obviously know your thermodynamics.
“You obviously know your thermodynamics”.
Unfortunately, Lawboy, you don’t!
Laws of motion = Newton
Laws of thermodynamics = Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot and Joseph Fourier.
Both were French military engineers. (Baron Fourier was Napoleon’s engineer).
Fourier also gave us the Fourier Transform. That, together with Harry Nyquist’s Sampling Theorem, are largely responsible for all existing forms of digital media, and the transmission methods we presently use to move them.
No Fourier/Nyquist = No Blawg! (or MP3s, video, Etc.)
On topic: Just because some administrative hack declares the Sergeant’s rant “Justified, legal and or proper”, and him saying “This matter has been adjudicated and I’ve been exonerated”, doesn’t make it so. Isn’t this where the outraged townsfolk, with torches and pitchforks in hand, converge upon Bogota city hall and demand a special prosecutor?
If Joe Blow citizen made the same recorded statements, they’d likely be charged with making “Terroristic Threats”!
Way to ruin a joke.
Are the townsfolks outraged? Is this the hill they’re ready to die on? Do they hate the cops and want to go to war over this? Are there no other issues, concerns, problems that are more important to the townfolk that mommy cops and daddy superintendent fighting? Some call this the “spotlight syndrome,” where you only know of, and look at, one problem and assume it’s the only issue, so solving that becomes the obsessive focus, when in reality there are a million other issues of greater and lesser significance that influence the relative importance of the problem you’re looking at.
If the townsfolk were sufficiently outraged, then they would march. They haven’t. It doesn’t make this more or less of a problem, but not the problem they’re willing to go to war over. There ya go.
In a post Sandy Hook world I am in shock that the parents, teachers, and local officials weren’t forced to do something because the feel police. If this would have happened in St. Louis County, you would have seen 20 soccer mom’s foaming at the mouth.
Still it’s kind of refreshing to see good old fashioned police abuse in a grade school. Really gets to the heart and meaning of qualified immunity.
The outraged mommies, which may have been there but for the fact that the School Board and Super were similarly outraged, have little to say to the police. If they screamed at the board, so what? And since the threat wasn’t directed at their children, it’s unlikely they would have been too concerned. People tend to appreciate wrongs that affect them and theirs. Others, not so much.
You see, Sgt. Lynch was right when he said, “there’s nothing you can do about it,” and despite their responsibility to protect the students and employees from a cop willing to abuse his authority, they’ve got nothing to stop him but hugs.
Well, there is something they can do. And by they, I mean the community.
Police Departments are usually overseen by mayors. So a mayor can put the pressure on the police chief to fire someone that abuses authority. If the mayor doesn’t act in a way the community deems appropriate, you vote the mayor out of office in favor of someone who will.
It is, somewhat, a microcosm of what we see in the federal govt. If Congress doesn’t act against a POTUS the way you feel they should, you vote them out.
It may not be a quick and easy answer (though a deluge of calls from a community on an issue might do the trick), but it stands as the ultimate oversight.
School boards, I might add, are also overseen by voters.
Aside from the many dots that need to be connected, the multitude of other issues that people who drawn straight lines fail to realize exist and accommodate in their naivete, and the wild use of layers of assumptions, it’s theoretically possible. Then again, so too are space aliens.
So a change.com petition signed by 2 million people can get the Marshal of the Supreme Court to arrest President Trump on a FISA warrant, right?
Well, SHG, you do stand four-square for free speech. The Captain said “justified, legal and or proper”, and I think you can choose “legal” from list, unless you see a credible threat somewhere.
OTOH, it would certainly be appropriate for the BoE to ban Lynch from the school grounds.
Aside from your being substantively wrong (police officers do not exercise personal free speech when cloaked in their official capacity), this is just stupid. What are the chances you are going to get in a decent poke when you never have a clue what you’re talking about and keep leaving comments that just prove you’re ignorant?
“Justified, legal and or proper.” Sounds awfully similar to “Glorious Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.” Its like, none of those things.
But it’s the “Democratic People’s Republic?!!! How can it be bad?
That depends on who is actually one of the Democratic Peoples, a moniker reserved for the most special and privileged of the total population. The rest of the schlubs are there to provide goodies and benefits for the Democratic Peoples. Which, if you think about it, seems eerily similar to how many of our law enforcement officers think about their status. Not that I am a cynical old fart or anything.
Nonsense. Everybody knows that the DPRK operates on a One man, One vote system. The crazy fat kid currently is that man…
The part that gets me is that the chief wrote “[no complaints] are brushed off or put to the side,” but includes “justified, legal and or proper” in the same note. I haven’t seen much more blatant boilerplate language in a long time – especially since Cpt. Sepp didn’t even bother to specify which one (or more) of the three he meant.
Empty words are endemic these days. For most people, they seem to work well enough. Notice that in none of the articles did any reporter bother ask why, or even write that they asked and the Sepp refused to answer?