Waite: Saratoga Springs Public Safety Commissioner misses mark in fact checking AG report

Among the most jarring facts presented are the expletive-laced text messages by Robin Dalton that reveal just how hellbent the city’s former public safety commissioner was on arresting social justice activists during the summer of 2021.

“Arrest all those mother[expletive],” Dalton texted then-Police Chief Shane Crooks on July 14, 2021, according to the AG report.

Dalton also texted about physically harming activists, at one point saying she wanted to find an activist and “kick her in the [expletive] mouth repeatedly,” according to the report.

Such an unflattering portrait of a coordinated effort by Dalton, former Mayor Meg Kelly and police to target local Black Lives Matter leaders – compiled in a clear timeline in all its ugliness and bellicose language – should be easy to condemn.

Somehow, it wasn’t for Tim Coll.

Instead of issuing any sort of repudiation and vowing to do better, Saratoga Springs’ current public safety commissioner issued only two brief statements questioning certain facts of the report and making no acknowledgment about how poorly activists have been treated over the past several years.

This week, Coll told me over text message that he’s limited in his response because of pending litigation and that he remains focused on the attorney general’s recommendations outlined in the report.

But is it that hard to call out actions as egregious as a former public safety commissioner’s desperate desire to have activists’ arrested or hurt?

To at least say, if true, this behavior is reprehensible?

Coll’s focus was instead purportedly on correcting the record of a report that he said contains “numerous gross inaccuracies,” such as the SSPD responding to protests with horse-mounted police and an armored vehicle in 2021. 

For what it's worth, photos in The Daily Gazette archives depict Saratoga Springs officers on horseback confronting protestors in 2020.

“Facts matter, and after all these years, I would have expected the AG’s office to get it right and they did not,” Coll said in a statement.

We can all agree that facts matter. And that’s why Coll’s decision to publicly refute certain details in the report while completely ignoring glaring evidence of widespread grotesque abuse of power is troubling, if not downright disturbing.

Arguably, the abstraction of facts is what exacerbated tensions in Saratoga Springs in the first place.

As the AG report notes, following George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis in 2020, protestors and Saratoga Springs officials peacefully marched side by side.

“Between May 31 and July 30, 2020, the SSPD responded to seven protests. They made no arrests and reported no weapons, violence, injuries or damage to property,” the report notes. “Protesters sometimes occupied the roadway and stopped in intersections to give speeches. When that happened, SSPD officers redirected traffic to keep protesters safe and did not interfere with the protest activity.”

But, the report notes, then came the insistence by some protestors that the 2014 death of Darryl Mount Jr., a 21-year-old biracial man who died months after being pursued by police downtown, was evidence that the brutality and corruption seemingly pervading police departments across the country had infiltrated Saratoga Springs, too.

That narrative — foundational to Saratoga Black Lives Matter — turned out to be a version of reality rejected by a jury in a civil trial brought by Mount’s mother.

As I wrote following the October verdict, the jury’s decision revealed that Saratoga Black Lives Matter relied heavily on argument rather than facts. 

But that verdict never changed the fact that the activists have been consistently, systematically and unduly targeted – a reality crystallized in the attorney general’s report, even if the report itself surfaced little new information.

So targeted were the activists that police, egged on by Dalton and Kelly, set aside facts when dealing with protestors.

For instance, on May 25, 2021, Dalton demanded arrests even as police officers told her a rally was peaceful.

Police also perpetuated a false narrative that protesters on July 14, 2021, impeded a car with someone allegedly in need of heart medication.

“Video taken by the passenger shows that protesters allowed his car to pass less than 45 seconds after they first learned of his alleged heart condition,” the attorney general’s report states. “Driving away, the passenger and his driver discussed where to go for dinner, with no further mention of the passenger’s heart medication.”

In addition, police officers fabricated, in spite of contradictory video evidence, the physical threats posed by protestors. And the report notes that city officials even brought the activists’ children into it, in September 2021 making an unwarranted call to Child Protective Services on the mother of Saratoga BLM leader Lexis Figuereo’s children.

It all amounts to a gross abuse of authority.

Given the torment activists suffered, with criminal charges brought against them routinely and unjustifiably, it’s no wonder they now plan to seek retribution via civil litigation of their own. 

As one activist told the AG’s office: the police treatment she and others endured, “felt like it was a throwback to the [19]60s.”

Indeed, that’s been the broader reckoning since the killing of George Floyd – if not before. Undeniable cellphone video of police shootings and other violence has been eerily similar to images from the Civil Rights Era.

And that’s why Coll’s response to the attorney general’s Saratoga Springs report is all the more dismaying. Rather than admonish gross actions by a predecessor, the public safety commissioner did more to discredit the report.

Yes, it’s important to fact check.

But emphasizing facts should also include acknowledging the whole dark truth.

Since the killing of George Floyd, Saratoga Springs has not had a public safety commissioner who’s had a healthy relationship with Saratoga Black Lives Matter activists. Following Dalton’s tenure, former Public Safety Commissioner James Montagnino went from a BLM ally, who celebrated with activists on Election Night 2021, to archrival. The turn came after Montagnino filed baseless criminal charges similar to those leveled against activists by the previous administration.

Now it’s Coll’s turn. He’s a Democrat who ran as a Republican in the 2023 race, and promised to bring about a different dynamic. But the former FBI special agent’s narrow reaction to the AG report, devoid of contrition on behalf of past leaders, demonstrates his priority is likely to always protect the reputation of the police department, even when facts demand something different.

Given his position, that’s understandable.

But it’s a damning start to a tenure that was supposed to bring change.