Lovely’s done.
Like the flawed hero of a Greek tragedy, she has been hoisted on her own petard. To conceal her own dishonesty, she sought to destroy the reputation and career of another, and that has proven her undoing, as the curtain on her deceit has been pulled back and the reaction of most is revulsion.
It’s all laid out chapter and verse in the timeline included by former police Chief La’Ron Singletary in his notice of claim against Rochester and its mayor. He claims defamation of character, a hostile work environment, and a wrongful termination.
That came about, his filing claims, because he refused to lie publicly and under oath to the City Council as it investigated who knew what when in regard to the death of Daniel Prude.
That man stopped breathing in the middle of Jefferson Avenue in the dark and cold of a March night. The public didn’t find out about that, or his subsequent death, until August, and people were infuriated that they had been kept in the dark for so long. As public upset became apparent, Lovely Warren claimed she had known nothing about Daniel Prude and the circumstances of his death. As that seemed increasingly implausible, she doubled down by claiming that she had been misled by the police chief, that he had kept the matter from her and that she was angry at him for his failings.
The problem was, none of that was true.
La’Ron Singletary had kept the mayor and her staff informed from the very beginning.
When the medical examiner ruled that Daniel Prude’s death was a homicide – at the hands of police – he reached out to the mayor within minutes. She not returning his call, he passed the information to three senior members of her staff less than a half an hour later.
Tracking her down at a press conference three days later, he informed her of the homicide determination.
He also kept her administration abreast of the two internal investigations that were immediately launched, the next-day turnover of the matter to the district attorney’s office and its immediate transfer of the case and all the information associated with it – including body camera footage – to the attorney general for her investigation.
It was all dress right dress.
But Lovely needed a scapegoat. She had blown off the Daniel Prude death, even as her city and the country roiled over the death of George Floyd, and now that it was all blown open by a lawsuit from Daniel Prude’s family, she needed an escape.
And she found it in Chief La’Ron Singletary.
She denounced him at a press conference, saying he had misled her, and that she has been poorly served by him. Saying she had not learned until late August of the matter.
She lied.
And he, for whom his good name and reputation had been everything, was destroyed. A man who had taken and lived by oaths of duty and integrity was described by his boss on the evening news as dishonest and unreliable, as dishonorable.
And that meant something to La’Ron Singletary. Something that maybe Lovely Warren and those around her can’t begin to understand.
The mayor’s mysterious right-hand man – Cephas Archie – tried to talk the chief down. Something about take it on the chin or take it for the team or take it in the shorts. Then the city’s communications director showed up to threaten the chief’s job and explain how to be a team player. And finally the mayor made her pitch, asking him, he claimed, to lie and omit, to tell a City Council inquiry falsehoods as it worked its way to the bottom of the matter. She asked him to practice his testimony for her, to let her hear what he was going to say.
The next day he put in his retirement paperwork. Him, and his whole command group. They all wanted out. They were men and women of duty, and they had sworn oaths and they were of a mind to keep them.
On Tuesday, City Hall exonerated itself. It said neither the mayor nor any of her heavies had violated any policies or procedures, and that all was well.
But at City Hall they forgot what cops do for a living.
They forgot that cops take notes and write down times and quotes and, sometimes, they record things.
Cops keep evidence and they understand timelines and they know how to sort out the truth from bull crap.
And they don’t like crooks.
And Lovely pissed off the wrong man.
And he laid it all out in black and white. The ugliness is in the wind. If his claims are correct, and no one truly doubts them, then Lovely Warren lied to an angry and upset community about the death of a black man in police custody, she defamed and tried to destroy one of the most capable sons of Rochester in a generation, and she attempted to deceive the City Council and its highly respected president.
All to cover her ass.
She’s done.
All that remains is for those who want to replace her to raise their hands and go before Democrat primary voters in the spring.