An Open Letter to the Albany County Sheriff and the Albany County DA

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An Open Letter of Concern and Demand for Investigation

TO:

Mr Daniel P. McCoy Albany County Executive 112 State Street, Room 200 Albany, NY 12207

Mr Craig D. Apple Sr. Albany County Sheriff Albany County Sheriff’s Office 16 Eagle Street Albany, NY 12207

Mr P. David Soares Albany County District Attorney County Judicial Center 6 Lodge Street Albany, NY 12207

Gentlemen:

It is sometimes remarkable that situations and circumstances that most of us clearly acknowledge as common-knowledge, because of their persistence and perfidiousness, and other situations and circumstances are assumed to be conspicuously demanding of the attention of our elected public officials, assuming that they are even minimally conscious, lucid, and interested.

We naturally do not expect any serious and intelligent human being to rely in major part, much less wholly, on the reporting in the local rags, the Times Union, and other media, such as the local news comedy hours, but we do expect that one of the most effective means of public discourse, the Internet, cannot possibly have failed to capture your attention–especially in view of the fact that we have placed the publications directly under your noses– at least in matters concerning your region of responsibility and your particular and specific offices and operations.

Sadly, we find either that you are ignorant of what is going on right under your noses, or even more sadly, you are uninterested. In either case, please accept this letter as a public wake-up call.

This blog has closely scrutinized the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk central school district and the situation in the town of Coeymans, both in your jurisdictions of Albany County, New York. What this blog, its writers, and its contributors have revealed is scandalous, criminal, and in desperate need of investigation and prosecution. We shall not misuse valuable space in this letter to rehash what has been discussed extensively and in detail in the numerous postings on this blog but we will cite two disturbing situations that require investigation within the purview of the Office of the District Attorney and of the Albany County Sheriff, two eminently important offices on which a great many residents, citizens, and visitors in Albany County depend for their safety and security, physical, psychological, and spiritual.

On the example of the town of Coeymans, this blog has reported numerous instances of apparent corruption in the Coeymans Police Department, managed by one Gerald Darlington. The Coeymans Police Department enjoys an unenviable reputation, and has had the reputation for many years of inefficiency, corruption, retaliation, and conflicts of interest. Nothing has changed but it has become unimaginably worse; it is the duty and obligation of the hierarchy in law enforcement and the executive, under which law enforcement falls in terms of governance, to investigate, audit, correct, and if required, to prosecute in these situations.

But how can the citizens of Coeymans or anywhere else expect or even hope for this necessary clean-up to be in any way successful if the very executive and law enforcement offices, whose mandate it is to investigate and to prosecute, are themselves compromised and tainted?

As mentioned above, the Coeymans Police Department is managed by a so-called chief, Gregory Darlington. The executive law enforcement office in the county, the office of the District Attorney P. David Soares, employs at least two very close relatives of Mr Darlington: Darlington’s wife is secretary to DA P. David Soares, and Darlington’s daughter is a prosecutor in Mr Soares’ office. This begs the question, Mr Soares, of how you can possibly maintain any level of security and confidentiality in your office and, should the occasion arise, how you can ensure that any complaints arriving in your office will receive impartial attention and, if necessary, investigation, when two close relatives of one of the very individuals you are being asked to investigate are in key positions in your office? Such an incredible situation does nothing to inspire confidence in the ethical operations of the Albany County District Attorney’s Office.

Some time ago, during the very vitriolic and savage school budget campaigns that ravaged this community, which continue with vendettas being satisfied and retaliation by those who cannot accept the nature of the community and get on with business, we made clear recommendations, having identified the nepotism, the conflicts of interest, and the corruption rampant in the Coeymans Police Department, that residents who do not feel safe calling the Coeymans Police for assistance, should instead call the Albany County Sheriff or the New York State Police. We published a Complaints Contact Sheet to assist those anxious residents. This lack of confidence in the Coeymans Police Department is longstanding, as is the common-knowledge practice of retaliation and coercion practiced by the Coeymans police officers against residents.

Since our recommendation, we have received disturbing reports from several residents that having called the Albany County Sheriff for assistance, they found that the Albany County Sheriff personnel, instead of responding directly, forwarded to the call without the residents’ knowledge to the Coeymans police, who appeared at the rather surprised residents’ homes and, in one instance, at the RCS High School. Why would the Albany County Sheriff’s department personnel refuse to respond? We may have the answer to this question (see below).

A further disturbing incident occurred last week when a local business owner, a woman, attempted file an harassment complaint with the Coeymans Police Department, and the officer on duty there, one Kerry Thompson, refused to take the complaint. Officer Thompson is married to Gregory Darlington’s sister, and Kerry Thompson is also a law enforcement employee of the Albany County Sheriff. The same questions put to Mr Soares are here put to Mr Apple, Albany County Sheriff: Given this situation in which the Albany County Sheriff is a recourse for residents and citizens fearful of the local Coeymans police, and given the situation that the Albany County Sheriff is necessarily involved in confidential investigations that have been taken out of the hands of the Coeymans Police Department for reasons of retaliation by the Coeymans Police Department, how can the Albany County Sheriff, Mr Apple, ensure that those investigations are secure and confidential and that the interests and privacy of the citizen resident are safeguarded, when you have on your staff an individual, Kerry Thompson, who is so closely associated not only with the Coeymans Police Department as an employee of that department, but also is married to the sister of the Coeymans police chief, Gregory Darlington. How, Mr Apple, can you ensure any security and confidentiality at all under these circumstances? How, Mr Apple, is it that you can reconcile the obvious ethical discrepancies between Kerry Thompson’s employment with the Albany County Sheriff’s department and his intimate association with the corrupt and tainted Coeymans Police Department?

Moreover, we have on this blog reported on the multiple conflicts of interest and have alleged other misconduct of one of the employees on the Coeymans Police Department, one Gerald Deluca. Deluca is intimately involved with a number of individuals and activities in the county and in the community that, under normal circumstances, would raise serious ethical if not legal questions, and would likely lead to at least ethical, if not criminal criminal, investigation of the myriad conflicts of interest. Deluca is employed by a number of special interest and lobbying entities including but not limited to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, Automotive Recyclers Association of New York (ARANY), the Main Street Small Business Coalition (MSSBC), Deluca Public Affairs, all of which serve to compromise any appearance of impartiality and objectivity in Deluca’s police investigative work at the Coeymans police department. We wonder very seriously how this has for so long, sirs, successfully escaped your attentions, and whether that circumstance was intentional or accidental? We now bring these matters to your attention by way of this blog.

We would like to mention also Deluca’s inappropriate associations with highly politically charged groups in the RCS community and his retaliative conduct in delaying important criminal investigations, one of which after six (6) months delay, had to be turned over by the resident to the County Sheriff’s department, intimidation of political opponents, failure to investigate criminal campaign sign investigations, undue influence and conspiracy with one close friend and board of education associate, Josephine O’Connor, and the conspiratorial arrest and abuse of due process of the RCS board of education president (with the collaboration of Kerry Thompson acting as a Coeymans police officer)!

Naturally, a properly conducted investigation of these circumstance is likely to uncover much, much more by way of impropriety and criminality, not the least in terms of multiple conflicts of interest, corruption, breaches of due process, abuse of police power, and much more in the Coeymans administration. We would expect that a complete audit of law enforcement records and activities, as well as interviewing of those residents and citizens who have served the town of Coeymans, the Coeymans Police Department, and the Coeymans courts with complaints would further serve the purposes of a good faith investigation of the widespread misconduct and corruption in both town governance and in law enforcement in this community. We would also expect that the backgrounds of the current employees of the Coeymans Police Department be carefully scrutinized for prior conduct and convictions that would make them unfit or at least undesirable for law enforcement work.

So, Mr County Executive, Mr District Attorney, and Mr County Sheriff, we hereby serve notice upon you all of our well-founded concern for security and confidentiality in your departments, of our concern for the ability of your offices to operate impartially and objectively, of our concern that your offices are, by virtue of the inappropriate and unethical degrees of relationship between key members of your staff and key persons of interest in the Coeymans Police Department and others in the administration and governance of the town of Coeymans, and demand that you appropriately audit, investigate, and if necessary to prosecute.

We urge, No! we demand that you respond affirmatively to our call for investigations and audit of the Coeymans law enforcement machine, and for correction of these scandalous circumstances of grave concern, and for the prosecution of any criminal conduct found.

For and on behalf of concerned citizen residents,

The Editor

Blog Posts of Particular Relevance:

• This Is Your Town, Coeymans! Do you like it?
• This Is Your Town, Coeymans! Criminals Gone Wild, Part II
• Corrupt Coeymans Police Effectiveness Compromised!!!
• Can You Explain This, Jerry?
• James Latter: Why Is He Still On the Board of Education?
• Retaliation Is A CRIME! Let’s Go After the Criminals!
• Stop the Presses…EXTRA! Bully Gangs at RCS
• Real Bullying at School is By the Teachers
• Josephine O’Connor: A Role Model of Maturity and Mental Stability…NOT!

Similar letters will be sent to state and federal law enforcement hierarchy, state and federal legislators, and to state and federal oversight and investigation entities. Separate letters will be sent to state and federal education officials, state and federal legislators, state and federal investigative agencies for schools. Of course, the ACLU and the NYCLU will be informed. We invite public comment to this blog by any citizen who has information or evidence to provide in terms of the concerns expressed in this letter. Thank you!

Special Notice: We make every effort to be truthful, complete, fair, and balanced on this blog; therefore, if you see anything that you know to be false or incorrect, or if you have additional information to clarify any issue, please let us know by e-mailing your information or by leaving a comment. It’s very important to us that we don’t fall into the same category as those whom this blog is intended to expose. Thank you very much in advance for your cooperation and assistance!