To the editor:

A Saranac Lake committee has proposed a CALEP (Counselor and Law Enforcement Partnership) program for the police review report it’s preparing. That’s surprising because the mental health and addiction difficulties CALEP addresses aren’t even mentioned in the executive order necessitating the report.

That’s not to say CALEP’s objectionable. But any proposal derived from Gov. Cuomo’s order requires scrutiny.

Executive Order 203 arrived last year amid furor over the death of career criminal and drughead George Floyd. The governor’s supporters hailed it as promoting policing policies more constraining of officers, and less injurious to Black criminal suspects. But others assailed it as promoting lawlessness in American cities.

If we read Order 203, we find expressions like “racial bias,” “systemic racism,” “restorative justice” and the like. Those charged expressions only cast doubts over any resulting proposals a committee might put into a police review report.

A second concern is the sidestepping response a committee member gave at a public hearing when she was unable to say whether the committee accords the presumption of innocence and right of due process to Minneapolis officers accused in the matter of Floyd.

Finally, there’s an Adirondack Diversity Initiative member on the committee. That’s like having Dracula in the Red Cross. We can chuckle, but the committee would enjoy higher regard if all members were serious persons of unchallenged prominence and balanced dispositions.

In their combination the above indications are telling. Disturbingly, they suggest at least some committee members have a presumption that misconduct by Minneapolis police caused Floyd’s death.

But they don’t know that. They haven’t considered Floyd’s misconduct. They can’t say Floyd’s combative resistance while flying high on opioids didn’t turn a routine situation into a confrontational and deadly one. Only a trial can say, and that trial hasn’t even started.

In 2014 we heard angry shouts of “Hands up — don’t shoot” in Ferguson, Missouri. Protesters were demanding punishment for a responding officer who’d shot and killed a Black suspect affectionately dubbed “The Gentle Giant.”

But an investigation and trial completely exonerated Officer Darren Wilson. No credible witnesses (many being Black) attested to having seen hands up. None heard cries of “Don’t shoot.” Instead, witness depositions and testimonies agreed that the Giant had initially retreated before suddenly turning and charging at Wilson.

Fortunately that officer was able to employ his weapon and save himself, as a brute with the strength of 10 men bore malevolently upon him.

So “Hands Up — don’t shoot” was an utter fabrication. It was a lie concocted by anti-police activists to spread a presumption of guilt against Officer Wilson. That lie died at Wilson’s trial, but we must wonder if it’s alive again within a Saranac Lake committee judging Minneapolis officers guilty before they’ve even had their day in court.

Let’s urge our committee to be careful preparing its review report. We don’t want crackpot proposals in it. We don’t want crackpot committees running our police department. If crackpots want to run our municipal departments, let them first behave as normal persons and seek political office.

John Edelberg

Saranac Lake