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Man shot dead by trooper was a sex offender
‘He kept to himself,’ neighbor says
The Associated Press

   POTSDAM — A man killed late Monday after wounding a state trooper was a registered sex offender who had spent more than six years in state prison for crimes against young girls, but a neighbor remembered the slain suspect for the time he brought her some apples.
   Steven McUmber, 45, was killed outside his upstate New York home by the wounded trooper after defying police commands and approaching them aggressively, Acting State Police Superintendent Preston Felton said.
   Gloria Weller, who lives across the street from where McUmber and his girlfriend lived, said Tuesday she met McUmber twice when he came to one of her garage sales.
   “He didn’t buy anything. But afterward, he came back and brought me some apples from his apple tree, which I thought was nice,” said Weller, who has lived in her house for 38 years.
   “I didn’t really neighbor with him. He didn’t bother me any. He kept to himself. But I would see him outside a lot, washing his car, putting up one of the birdhouses he built, in his vegetable garden,” Weller said.
   Although McUmber lived across the street from her for three years, Weller said she learned only recently that he was a registered sex offender.
   “He came to a neighbor’s party and my daughter-in-law said his picture was posted on the wall at her store as a sex offender,” Weller said.
   According to the state Department of Correctional Services, McUmber was convicted in St. Lawrence County in 1989 of raping a 13-year-old girl and served about three years of a maximum five-year prison sentence.
   In 1997, he pleaded guilty to attempted sexual abuse involving an 11-year-old girl and served another 3 1 /2 years in state prison. He was released in September 2001, state records showed.
   State police, meanwhile, returned to the shooting scene Tuesday to continue their investigation and figure out why McUmber reacted the way he did.
   Trooper Amanda Reif, 29, remained in serious condition with a shoulder wound at Fletcher Allen Medical Center in Burlington, Vt. A five-year veteran, Reif recently returned from maternity leave. She has a 7-month-old son, Felton said.
   According to Felton, Reif was responding to a domestic dispute call just before 5 p.m. at the home of Christy Moore, who was not at home when the shooting occurred.
   “She took off and called the police because he was going to do something,” neighbor Paul Layaw told The Watertown Daily Times. Layaw said he tried to photograph the scene, but he is not sure if he succeeded because investigators took his film.
   Arnold Fefee, who was gardening outside Weller’s home, told police he heard a loud shot, as if it came “from a big rifle.” Felton said police recovered two weapons from the home.
   After wounding Reif, McUmber went back in his home and emerged moments later. By that time, the house was surrounded by several heavily armed troopers and Potsdam village police officers.
   Weller, who was pulling into her driveway after a trip to the drugstore, said she saw McUmber come outside with his hands in the air and then kneel down in his driveway. She heard officers yell “Get down, sir! Get down, sir!” and saw several officers pointing their guns at McUmber.
   Weller said she turned away as she was getting out of her car and only heard the second shot.
   Felton said police asked McUmber to get down on the ground and he at first complied, but then rose “in an aggressive state” and ran toward the troopers.
   Lying wounded in a flower bed, Reif fired one round from her pistol, killing McUmber.
   Since March 2006, six state troopers have died in the line of duty, including four killed by gunfire, according to the New York State Troopers Police Benevolent Association. Another five troopers were wounded during that time.  

  
  
  

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Top court backs police policy on ‘critical incidents’
BY JILL BRYCE Gazette Reporter

   The Appellate Division has ruled that a New York State Police policy that prohibits troopers involved in “critical incident investigation” from legal or union representation will stand.
   These so called “critical incidents’ involve actions by a trooper that result in death or critical injuries, or when a trooper fires his weapon.
   The court also ruled that the question of whether Civil Service Law applies in these circumstances and entitles troopers to legal and union representation when they are questioned as a target for disciplinary action “is not settled.”
   In the ruling, the judges said the PBA never alleged that disciplinary charges were brought against any PBA member as a result of a critical incident inquiry.
   Five state troopers and the Police Benevolent Association fi led the initial lawsuit after the troopers were denied counsel while part of a critical incident inquiry. None of the five individuals were ever sanctioned.
   Until 2002, troopers could contact their collective bargaining representatives and consult with counsel before answering questions. In 2002, the state revised its protocols and prohibited this consultation.
   The state Attorney General’s Office requested the lawsuit by the five troopers and PBA be dismissed. The state said troopers did not have a constitutional right to counsel because they were not in custody and Civil Service Law did not apply.
   In September 2006 Supreme Court Justice Joseph C. Teresi ruled that the state policy denying troopers counsel was illegal under Civil Service Law.
   The state filed an appeal.
   In its nine-page ruling, the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division judges said even if the PBA is correct that Civil Service law applies, it lacks standing in the case “because they didn’t demonstrate that the policy will result in disciplinary charges being brought against a trooper based on a statement given during the critical incident inquiry.”
   The Appellate Division said the PBA did not prove that a continuation of the policy will “result in actual harm to members in either the criminal or disciplinary context and we conclude that the PBA lacks standing to challenge the defendants’s current policy on these grounds.”
   The judges said the state police have repeatedly revised the critical incident protocols.
   “We are disappointed in the decision the court said we didn’t reach the merits,” said Mark T. Walsh, the attorney who represented the PBA.
   He said the PBA believes its 4,000 active members are entitled to representation in a critical incident inquiry.
   “We think it’s an important issue and important to all our members and we plan to appeal,” he said.

  
  
  

The police should be held to a higher standard than a regular person, after all he holds human life in his hands and with his decisions.

ANYONE in law enforcement should be not only HELD to a higher standard, but should be PUNISHED to a higher standard than the average joe on the street. After all, it is law enforcement that takes the oath to 'uphold' the law. Well, if they break the laws that they are enforcing...than what the hell? If their punishment was the same as any dirt bag off the street, than it would just make anyone in law enforcement 'legal criminals with guns' with their unions to protect them. NONSENSE.

They are enforcers--until due process lets the perps out,,, due to a technicality......just like in medicine---never and exact science never will be---good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people......

But---then there is the word being thrown around-accountability----the law makes a person accountable based upon societies own baseness/foundation....

would we cut of the hand of a thief??
castrate/sterilize/or give hormone treatments to a sex offender(please, we cant even drawn the line on deviant sexual behavior and what is tolerable)?

It's a good thing I am not a police officer----cleaning up that kind of garbage is not my forte'

But at the same time--you are not more priviledged just because you are a police officer----didn't they used to be called officers of peace/peace officers???

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Trooper union issues scathing report
BY BOB CONNER Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Bob Conner at 462-2499 or bconner@dailygazette.net.

   The troopers’ union has delivered to Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Acting State Police Superintendent Preston Felton a highly critical report on “the State of the State Police,” and demanded an independent, “blue ribbon panel” to investigate the agency.
   “We are issuing this report because of the disastrous events involving our members in the last 18 months,” the PBA said. “These include, but are not limited to: the unacceptable mistakes during the protracted search for Ralph Phillips, which resulted in the heartbreaking death of Trooper Joseph Longobardo and the severe wounding of Sgt. Donald Baker Jr.; and the tragic turn of events that led to the death of Trooper David Brinkerhoff.”
   Ralph “Bucky” Phillips murdered Longobardo and wounded Baker last year, when they were part of a state police manhunt for him in western New York, after he had broken out of jail and shot another trooper. He was caught and pleaded guilty to the crimes.
   Brinkerhoff was killed April 25 this year in Delaware County by friendly fire, as police officers exchanged shots with Travis Trim, a fugitive who had shot another trooper the day before. Trim also died in the shootout.
   The PBA has made numerous criticisms of the way the Phillips manhunt was handled by state police management. In both the Phillips and Brinkerhoff cases, it criticized the state police’s failure to “conduct honest self-assessments.”
   Troopers Longobardo, Brinkerhoff and Baker were all from the Capital Region.
   The PBA also brought up the handling by state police of a Dec. 2, 2005, domestic incident at the Clifton Park home of then-Rep. John Sweeney, saying: “It is our view that the state police originally took steps to hide this information from the press, even though years earlier they released very similar information in a domestic disturbance involving then-Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue.
   “The state police changed the [Sweeney] report from a domestic disturbance to an intentionally generic ‘call for service.’ We have a lack of faith in an agency that hides documents and changes them to protect the reputation of a wellconnected politician.”
   The 2005 incident became public just before last November’s election, when an apparent state police blotter review was leaked, showing that Sweeney’s wife Gayle had called 911 to claim he was “knocking her around.” Sweeney had apparently seen a separate police account of the police response to his house that did not go into the detail of the one leaked, leading him to initially deny the validity of the leaked blotter review. He subsequently declined to discuss the matter.
   State police also have declined to discuss the matter, but their spokesman, Lt. Glenn Miner, maintained Monday that Sweeney was not treated differently from anyone else, and that state police continue to be unable to discuss the case out concern for the Sweeney family’s privacy.
   This year, Sweeney filed for divorce.
   The leak of the blotter review was widely seen as having contributed to the defeat of Sweeney, a Republican, by Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand.
   Leaders of the Democratic-controlled Assembly including Speaker Sheldon Silver have in the past echoed some of the PBA’s concerns about the Phillips manhunt.
   On Monday, Silver’s office referred comment to Assemblywoman RoAnn Destito, D-Rome, chairwoman of the Government Operations Committee, who said she has read the PBA report and wants to look into the matter further.
   “I’m not ruling out a hearing,” Destito said, saying she wants “some sort of plan to move the state troopers into the 21st century.”
   Miner noted that the PBA report indicates that the state police under Felton have moved to address some of the union’s concerns, and said police management will continue to address safety issues.
   State police issued a 160-page report on the Phillips manhunt, indicating “various operational deficiencies, and recommendations have been suggested to correct those deficiencies. It was determined that these shortcomings did not materially or adversely affect the final outcome of the manhunt.”
   Several state police leaders, including then-Superintendent Wayne Bennett, have left the agency since the Phillips manhunt. Bennett is now Schenectady public safety commissioner.
   State police have not released a report on the Brinkerhoff shooting.
   Spitzer spokesman Paul Larrabee said Denise O’Donnell, the governor’s assistant secretary for criminal justice, is reviewing the PBA document and “has not reached any conclusion or decision” regarding it. Spitzer’s office referred a reporter to the state police report on the Phillips manhunt.
   Larrabee declined to comment on the Sweeney case.  

  
  
  

In this day and age with the type of criminals that we live with I think it's the troopers responsibility to take some precautions to protect his and our lives. They can't blame the Governor and State Legislature for everything that goes wrong. Maybe some changes in training would help to solve some of the problems.

It is just a paramilitary group---if it was a general in the Army---off he/she would go to another outfit.....

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Acting state police superintendent to retire
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Associated Press

ALBANY — Acting State Police Superintendent Preston Felton is resigning.
Felton, a 26-year veteran, says in a statement he’ll retire April 4. Gov. David Paterson’s office declined to comment on a possible replacement. Felton declined to be interviewed. Next in command is Col. Pedro Perez, State Police field commander.
Last fall, following a year when a half-dozen troopers were shot, two fatally, Felton ordered officers on patrol to wear the bullet-resistant vests that previously were optional. The 4,900-member force also got other new equipment, including .45-caliber handguns that replaced the 9mm sidearms, and defibrillators and more visible emergency lights for patrol cars.