Trust us, it's the tip of the iceberg as we are also aware of other egregious actions demonstrating his over reach issuing subpoenas without Grand Jury authority that trample First Amendment rights. There are also the examples of protecting his friends rather than recusing himself as he should have.
Read this from today's NY Times and hope the Governor acts as soon as the Attorney General determines whether his actions justify removal from office.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo
took a necessary step last year when he empowered New York’s attorney
general to take control of cases in which police officers may have
unjustifiably killed unarmed citizens. His order, enacted several months
after a New York grand jury failed to indict the officer who killed
Eric Garner, was intended to assure the public that police officers who
kill civilians would be prosecuted fairly and without bias.
Mr.
Cuomo must now deal with the case of a district attorney who simply
defied his order. An investigation will determine whether Joel Abelove,
the D.A. in upstate Rensselaer County, also committed acts of
malfeasance that would obligate Mr. Cuomo to remove him from office. His
conduct in this case has certainly raised doubts about his fitness to
continue in office.
Mr.
Abelove opposed the order from the start. Then he actually ignored it
in the case of a police officer in Troy who last month shot and killed a
black motorist named Edson Thevenin. By rushing recklessly ahead with
the prosecution case, Mr. Abelove created the very sense of doubt that
the order was meant to prevent.
The
governor’s order gives the attorney general the right to intercede
“where, in his opinion, there is a significant question as to whether
the civilian was armed and dangerous at the time of his or her death.”
It requires that a district attorney get state authorizations before
making grand jury presentations in cases where civilians were unarmed or
where there is a question about whether the person was armed or
dangerous.
The
state attorney general’s office says that when the Troy case began to
unfold, it informed Mr. Abelove that it was reviewing the matter, which
meant that he was bound to refrain from actions that might jeopardize a
possible prosecution. He plunged ahead, which is what the executive
order was expressly intended to forestall. He hastily took the case
before a grand jury — just five days after the shooting — and the jury
failed to indict the officer.
News
accounts have raised troubling questions about Mr. Abelove’s handling
of the case. For example, The Albany Times Union this month reported
that Mr. Abelove had failed to call two people who witnessed the
episode. The newspaper subsequently reported that Mr. Abelove took the
unusual step of giving the police officer immunity in the grand jury proceeding — even though he should have been the subject of the investigation.
The
state should swiftly review the record of this case, and the governor
should begin removal proceedings if Mr. Abelove is proved guilty of
malfeasance.
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