Crash Test Dummies
Great news: the next time you swerve across three lanes of traffic and fail to yield to oncoming cars and cause an accident and the cop’s getting ready to write you a ticket, tell him that CMPD Chief Rodney Monroe says it’s not necessary.
Investigative blogger and professional agitator Cedar Posts broke this story and the uptown paper provides additional details. Bottom line: Monroe was tooling around in a city-owned car with Mecklenburg Commissioner Vilma Leake as a passenger, when he pulled across three lanes of traffic and caused a fender-bender. A police report indicates Monroe was at fault, but no ticket was issued.
When asked by the Observer why he wasn’t issued a ticket in the collision, Monroe said: “We don’t write tickets in accidents. I was treated no differently than anybody else.”
Monroe turned to Maj. Paul Zinkann, commander of the Criminal Investigations Bureau, for clarification, and Zinkann agreed. Zinkann said a motorist would be charged only if there was “personal injury or a clear delineation of fault.”
This could probably be written off as no big deal, except that it sounds clear from the report that there should have been clear delineation of fault; plus it’s the third vehicular accident Monroe has been party to in the last 18 months, according to Cedar Posts, who has some wicked-good cop shop sources.
In that light, it begs the question why was Monroe chauffeuring around a county commissioner? What, if any, causal role did Leake play in the accident? Did her floral brooch fly loose and blind Monroe? Did her persistent laments about myriad unreadinesses drive him to the point of distraction? So many questions, so few answers.
More importantly, with three accidents in his file why is Monroe still driving a city-owned vehicle? Is it standard operating procedure for a city employee to go crashing around in city-owned vehicles and keep right on trucking, or is Monroe getting some kind of special treatment? Not that he’s ever gotten anything like that before.
It would be nice to think someone, anyone, on the city council would interested in finding some answers and demanding some accountability. But that’s never been their strong suite when it comes to the incumbent police chief. Not when it involves insanely large amounts of loot, or a rogue officer committing sexual assaults, or fleets of police cars seemingly vanishing into thin air, or suspect reporting of crime numbers.
City councilmembers have been more than willing to play deaf, dumb and blind on all those counts and more. So there’s scant evidence or reason to think the latest Monroe mash-up will play any different.
Onward and upward: DNC 2012.
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