La’Ron Singletary was sitting in a meeting when a participant across the table, who worked in police department administration, said she’d just gotten an email saying that he had been fired by the mayor.
It was a bolt out of the blue.
At public odds with the mayor about who was or was not involved in a seeming cover-up of the Daniel Prude death, he had recently put in his retirement papers, giving the city, in effect, his two-week notice. It was a hard parting, and the end of a mostly brilliant 20-year career, the story of a city kid challenged since high school to make the most of himself and, ultimately, the department he joined.
And he had been successful. A very young chief, he put together a command group that was the best anyone in the department remembered. Mostly black, and completely competent, La’Ron and his deputies were riding high.
But for five months the city sat on the obviously troublesome circumstances of Daniel Prude’s passing, and when lawyers for his survivors blew it wide open with a series of video releases, the mayor said she’d known nothing about it and she hung it around the police chief’s neck.
Which led to the retirement, on principle.
Principles. Those can be rare things these days.
But the admin lady said she’d been notified to process his firing, that the mayor had ordered his immediate termination, and he jumped up to go to City Hall to find out what was happening.
He was going to drive, but the mayor had already had his city-issued car seized.
Instead of City Hall, a letter had been left, ordering him upstairs at the Public Safety Building to the Professional Standards Section, where they confiscated his badge, his gun, his keys, his identification, and told him he had to turn in his uniform.
This is La’Ron Singletary. A Boy Scout. A guy with a clean nose and a clean conscience, a straight arrow who had spent all of his adult life serving the city of Rochester. A police chief who had the admiration of the people in the squad cars and the people in the neighborhoods.
And this is how Lovely did him.
He had to call to get a ride home, a ride in a city car had been forbidden, and to have someone bring him in some civilian clothes to wear home.
And then he was escorted out of the Public Safety Building.
But that’s just the insult, not the injury.
By firing him days before his retirement began, the mayor cost La’Ron lifetime medical and dental coverage. Earned by his 20 years, but separate from his pension, her decision stripped him of that additional benefit. That will cost his family some $20,000 a year. Having given notice like a gentleman, he opened himself to this hateful maliciousness. A dishonorable deed done an honorable man.
And this is how Lovely did him.
And how she did the department, and the community it serves.
Because she didn’t have a replacement. She didn’t have a plan. All that mattered was destroying La’Ron. All the department’s captains declined consideration for the chief’s position, as did all the lieutenants, and the few sergeants who were asked. Ultimately, she chose a retired police officer, a political appointee to the troubled Rochester Housing Authority, as the new chief, and the only captain who would accept a promotion, as the new deputy.
It was he who was contacted by an interagency drug task force to get final sign off on a series of raids associated with a long-standing drug investigation. He said he would have to get the mayor’s approval. Word came back that it wasn’t a good day for the mayor. She was swearing in the new interim chief and City Hall didn’t want any distractions.
Now the department is running scared. Officers who had been close to the chief or his command group are afraid of further punitive strikes by the mayor. Everyone is keeping their head down and staying close to the union. Officers, especially prominent officers, have had protesters at their homes, and suspect that their addresses have been leaked, either by the mayor or by some on City Council.
And last week the mayor ordered the silencing of two Twitter accounts used by the police department, which reported on incidents of violent crime, seizures of illegal guns, and ran pictures of rioters, looters and gunmen, identifying them with the assistance of the public.
Meanwhile, La’Ron Singletary is looking for work.
But is finding nothing but closed doors. Almost like someone had blackballed him.
And Rochester is left with a mayor who is not only under federal indictment, but has also alienated the most powerful politicians in the region, coming off a weekend where there were seven separate shooting.
And that is how Lovely did you.