terrapinsanity.com

With the rest of our College Park community we’ve watched in horror as footage of the post-basketball “riot” – complete with police assaults on party-goers – has emerged (sometimes grudgingly, as evident in the last day, when we learn that only some of the surveillance camera footage has been exposed.)

In other circumstances we’d make some snarky comment about how leadership laments this not for the civil rights abuse but for the impact on the important recruiting mission of poor Babs Gill, director of admissions.

The stark truth, however, is that we’re not just watching a civil rights disaster unfold – we’re potentially on the brink of fostering new ones.

This campus is presently searching for a new chief of police, following retirement of a good man who did a good job for a number of years. Three candidate replacements have emerged, ala
today’s Diamondback. Two have ties with the county and regional operations that were responsible for “peace keeping” at the riot.

But let’s be clear about what this means. One in particular, David Mitchell, doesn’t just “have ties”. He trained and mentored the senior leadership that was on watch for that fiasco. As a chief of Prince George’s County police, then superintendent of state police, Mitchell set the standard and tone for officers moving up through the ranks to leadership positions today. Mitchell himself is a product of PGPD from the 1970′s. However poor a reputation today’s PG operation has, today’s troops are the kinder gentler version compared to the head knocking days of yesteryear. Mitchell made his bones on in the early 80′s on TARS, “Tactical Alarm Response”, a unit now disbanded because of its awkward record of suspects getting dead. So today a student or two got a wood shampoo from some pumped up troop. Your point?

With Mitchell, this campus can bring one of law enforcement’s ultimate political cronies into its fold, solidifying a reputation for College Park being a rest stop for officials to collect a pay check between important jobs. In doing so we will invite more of what we all just witnessed.

Or it can start fresh with other candidates for the job.