Saratoga Black Lives Matter has alleged that the Saratoga Springs Police Department has been responsible for frequent abuse of and violence against people of color in this city. One of their frequent chants in street demonstrations downtown has been, “How do you spell murderers? SSPD!”
According to BLM, the Darryl Mount Case is the most egregious example of misconduct by the SSPD. In this post, I offer a brief update on that case, but I have also taken a deep dive into two other cases often cited by BLM as evidence of police abuse to try to assess the validity of their claims. What follows is documentation I obtained through the Freedom of Information Law pertaining to two cases that occurred in the city in the last couple of years:
- The stopping for questioning by the police of a black military personnel after a late-night break-in on Broadway.
- The stopping and questioning by the police of BLM activist Alexis Brown and her boyfriend following a BLM demonstration.
The Darryl Mount Case
The Mount family has sued the city, claiming that the police killed their son, Darryl Mount. This case is finally to be tried this fall, and an independent jury will hear the evidence and decide whether the city has any culpability in the matter.
While for the last two years, the New York State Attorney General’s Office has been conducting a review of interactions between the SSPD and BLM, particularly related to a demonstration in July of 2021, none of the police officers who were involved in the Mount incident have been subpoenaed.
The local media have reported that BLM leader Lexis Figuereo has met on several occasions with the Attorney General’s office. According to Figuereo, the AG has been updating him on the progress of her investigation into the interaction of police with BLM protesters. He has never brought up, however, the failure of the AG’s office to investigate the Darryl Mount case.
Figuereo has repeated many times that the police “murdered” Darryl Mount and that he wants Justice for Darryl Mount. One would have expected Figuereo to be outraged at the apparent unwillingness of the AG to pursue an investigation into Mount’s death. It is interesting that rather than publicly criticizing the AG for her inaction or organizing protests to try to pressure her to investigate the Mount case, Figuereo is silent.
The Case of Michael Vaughn
Michael Vaughn was an active-duty army captain visiting family in Saratoga Springs when he was stopped by the police following a late-night home invasion incident on Broadway in 2022. He submitted a complaint about being stopped.
The call to 911
On May 6, 2022, just before midnight, the police received a 911 call from a woman living on Broadway that a man had attempted to enter her apartment through a window. Here is the recording of that call (it has been slightly edited to protect the identity of the victim).
According to police records, the call was received at 11:57 PM. As the shift change for the police is midnight, the four-to-twelve shift was returning to the police station when they were directed to deploy in the downtown area looking for the suspect.
As indicated in the call, the victim gave sometimes contradictory descriptions of the intruder, which is not unusual for first-hand accounts.
The police encountered Captain Vaughn on Maple Avenue just after midnight. Captain Vaughn met some of the characteristics described by the caller.
The Body Cams
The following are two body cams from the officers responding to and questioning Captain Vaughn. A plainclothes detective, who is not required to wear a body cam, had already engaged Captain Vaughn 20 seconds before the officers wearing body cam arrived. Captain Vaughn is questioned for about 5 minutes.
Captain Vaughn submitted a complaint to the police department about the incident. Lt. Laura Emanation was tasked with reviewing his complaint. Following is the audio file of her phone conversation with Captain Vaughn regarding her investigation of the incident. While it is 35 minutes long, I urge readers to listen to the entire recording where Captain Vaughn lays out his concerns, and Lt. Emanation responds by explaining the police procedures that were followed minute by minute. Among other things, she asks Captain Vaughn if he thought the police could have done anything differently that they didn’t do that night. He replies, “Catching the guy who did it before approaching me.”
Alexis Brown Stop
Following one of the BLM downtown demonstrations in 2021, the police stopped Ms. Brown and her boyfriend, who were returning home from the downtown action.
Ms. Brown’s friend had been reported to have placed a bag of some sort in their car, and the police were dispatched to check the bag.
Ms. Brown has repeatedly denounced the police for this stop. She described the experience as traumatic but did not file a complaint.
Body Cam Footage Of Brown Stop
Some Thoughts
As a person committed to social change, I believe that it is important to criticize and insist on change where government fails in its responsibilities, but it is just as important to praise and support those we see as performing in a manner we want to continue.
The central question is whether it is fair to associate the actions of our police with the excesses that we frequently see on national television occurring in other cities. Are the gratuitous acts of excessive force and belligerence against people of color graphically dramatized on the evening news regularly replicated here in Saratoga Springs?
This city is fortunate to have had many outstanding police officers who have performed in a way that we should admire and support. I would also add that some of our best people on the force have retired prematurely due to the abuse of authority by our current Public Safety Commissioner, James Montagnino. We should not confuse his unfortunate behavior with the men and women who serve under him.
In my opinion, the officers in these incidents showed professional restraint and courtesy in their interactions with the individuals they stopped. I leave it to the readers of this blog to assess for themselves whether these incidents support the BLM claims.
Saratoga Springs Politics 
I want to thank the Saratoga Springs Police Department for their professionalism and service to our community.
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Yes they were professional and polite, but I think you would agree that’s a minimum standard. The 911 caller was very clear that it was an “Asian or Latin” man in a “short sleeved shirt” (repeated) and heading south on Broadway (not east). Why would the police stop a black man wearing a long-sleeved shirt east of Broadway?
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Thank you for your detailed digging on these issues
Many will have varying opinions it is helpful to have these details and insights
We all want a fair and just community at least to the best of our abilities
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Regarding the Darryl Mount incident, it should be noted that the Public Safety Department provided a report backed up by videos from surveillance cameras and pages of documents which covered evidence gathered during the SSPD investigation of the incident. All this information was released to the public during a meeting held on June 20, 2014 in City Hall. That information supported the determination that allegations of Darryl’s girlfriend and Darryl’s family were not true. Though no one knows exactly what happened to Darryl after police lost sight of him as he ran into a construction area, there are no inconsistencies in the investigation and no indication that Darryl was assaulted by anyone. All evidence points to a probable fall off scaffolding onto pavement where he was eventually found by police officers.
While BLM activists continue to use the Darryl Mount incident as a prime basis for their efforts, nothing the police did that night had anything to do with racism. It was a domestic violence incident. The police were only trying to intervene in order to protect Darryl’s girlfriend from further injury. They were doing their job. Imagine the uproar if the officers had stood on Caroline Street watching Darryl beat his girlfriend while not attempting to stop the violence.
Regarding the Michael Vaughn incident, after listening to the conversation between Michael and Lt. Laura Emanatian, it is obvious to me that the SSPD suffered a tremendous loss when Laura retired before her time. She is a bright, empathetic and thoughtful woman who was an important asset to the department.
Regarding Alexis Brown and her boyfriend being stopped by the police apparently after leaving a downtown BLM protest, I know too little to judge. It would be helpful if we knew what the police thought they were looking for in that car. Both Alexis and her boyfriend seemed to behave responsibly and with restraint. The officers were polite. I came away thinking that all four of the people on that video were very nice people.
Chris Mathiesen
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I think there is a serious generational gap in how people see interactions with the police. I haven’t taken the time to watch all of these videos, but I watched a good amount of the Brown stop footage. The officer orders Ms. Brown’s boyfriend out of the car without a clear reason, which doesn’t seem ordinary. Before the officer even gives a reason for the stop, he subjects Ms. Brown’s boyfriend to an intense questioning about how long he has dated his girlfriend, past experiences he has had with police, and a number of other personal details that seem to have no relevance to the stop. Once he gives a reason for the stop, it is that an undercover officer saw a hand-off of a bag between people. I don’t see how someone taking a bag from someone else is probable cause for a 30 minute stop in which you are subjected to dozens of questions about your personal life.
It is hard to see why this is necessary, or how it is even police work. The subjects probably left the interaction confused about why they had been stopped, startled about having been asked such in depth personal questions, and annoyed at having 30 minutes of their time wasted. I doubt that you or I have had an experience with the police like this. Good police interactions should not end with people feeling this way. I am not going to go so far as to allege malevolence here, but there is a bizarre level of entitlement here from the officer to spend so much time asking such personal questions for such an unclear reason. I don’t feel safer knowing that police are conducting stops like this. I don’t see how this can be considered restraint or courtesy. It is, at best, a small town cop wasting everyone’s time.
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Rob, there is no right to not feel “annoyed” or “confused”.
And you “don’t feel safer” after seeing this video? If you live in Saratoga, then your standard of safe is extraordinary in the first place. As long as you’re not downtown after 2:00am, your chances of being in any kind of conflict in this city are microscopic. You need to reconsider your perspective about safety.
If you can find a way to criticize the police for a interaction that ends with no problems on either side (Brown never even filed a complaint), then you’re going to have a hard time ever finding common ground with anyone who remotely supports the police. But maybe that’s not what you’re looking for anyway…
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I appreciate Rob and Bruce’s comments. The purpose of this blog is to engage in conversation about challenging issues in a thoughtful and constructive way.
In the case of the Vaughn stop, and with respect to Bruce’s observations, I would offer the following.
A home invasion is a serious act with potentially grave consequences. The limits of the accuracy of descriptions from victims is a well documented problem. Even in her call to the police she is uncertain about the pants/shorts and the ethnicity of the person she saw. I don’t find it surprising that the police focused on the dark clothing of someone in their search of the downtown area for the man who tried to force his way into the victim’s apartment. In order to protect the community they rapidly deployed and encountered Captain Vaughn. As observed by another commenter, the fact that the victim saw him heading South on Broadway does not mean that he could not have changed direction. What you see as over zealous, I view as men and women trying to find someone who represented a serious threat to the safety of people in this community.
As regards the Brown incident, the legal evolution of the grounds to stop someone on suspicion referred to as the “Terry Stop” is very broad. The basic standard is “reasonable suspicion.” I think people of good will can disagree as to whether the grounds for this stop meets this standard. The police were concerned about what was in the bag carried by Ms. Brown’s companion.
It is regrettable that Ms. Brown did not issue a complaint to the police department that would have prompted a full review of whether the standard was met.
The main take-away for me is the behavior of the police in this matter. BLM has continually portrayed the police as thugs bent on humiliating and harming people of color in this community similar to what we all see on the nightly news of police excesses in this country. One of their most frequent chants had been “how do you spell murder? SSPD”
While being stopped by the police is always at least a little intimidating, I am sure that for Ms. Brown who believes that the police murdered Darryl Mount, it had to be more than intimidating.
Still in both cases the police clearly make an effort to pre-empt any escallation of the encounters by maintaining an appropriate tone and courtesy. There was no shouting or belligerent gestures. In the case of Captain Vaughn they simply want to make sure that he is not the person they are seeking who attempted the break in. In the case of Brown, they simply want to determine if anything in the bag was potentially dangerous.
Both Bruce and Rob clearly see all of this as over-policing, my main point is that our officers clearly have been trained to be courteous and professional when dealing with people no matter what their color. It is no exageration to describe BLM as alleging that our police officers are white supremacists trolling the city for people of color to humiliate and harm. I think these videos and particularly Lieutenant Laura Emanations phone converstation with Captain Vaughn undermine the BLM narrative.
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Thanks for the dialogue, JK. Agreed that these videos on their own do not depict police abuse or deprivation of civil rights. I broadly support police reform and freedom of speech, but I recognize it must be hard to hear this type of charged rhetoric for officers. I don’t personally use this type of rhetoric in talking about the problems I have with policing.
I think there’s a world of difference between discussing whether these videos are evidence of misconduct, vs discussing whether these videos are exemplary of police work that is necessary, respectful, and applied equally to all citizens. I think that the latter is a conversation that many aren’t even interested in entertaining.
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I agree.
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So the caller said “Latin-Asian looking male” in black clothing, but they stop the black man. You don’t see the Captain’s point of view?
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It does not appear to be true that “Captain Vaughn met some of the characteristics described by the caller.”
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Darryl Mount was a criminal who died from injuries he suffered while fleeing the scene of a crime he committed. It was his own fault.
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Bruce, I don’t agree that the 911 caller was as clear about the identifying characteristics of the man who tried to enter her apartment as you seem to think.
For instance, you say “the 911 caller was very clear that it was an ‘Asian or Latin’ man”. But what she actually says is “Looks like Latin or Asian. I’m not sure” before then, without explanation, dropping the Asian possibility and saying Latin. The description of the clothes he was wearing also changes, and if you listened to the tape of Lt. Emanation’s conversation with Captain Vaughn you know that details of the description continued to change literally minute by minute. The only consistency seems to be a male with dark hair wearing dark clothes-three characteristics that fit Captain Vaughn. And just because the intruder went south on Broadway doesn’t mean he necessarily continued in that direction. This stop was done within a couple of blocks of where the incident occurred.
As Mr. Kaufmann points out and studies show, eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, understandably so after going through the trauma of, in this case, a home invasion. If you listen to the tape of Lt. Emanation’s conversation with Captain Vaughn, she explains carefully why he was stopped given what the police had to go on and how and why they proceeded as they did. I would urge you to listen to that complete tape before drawing any conclusions about this incident. And by the way, in the end they got the right guy.
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I listened to the whole phone conversation…I guess we can never know the counter factual of a white man with dark clothing walking alone on Maple at that exact time.
And I guess we can agree to disagree with the Lt’s claim that he “fit the description.”
Look, it’s not a particularly egregious situation as the police didn’t escalate. But can you empathize with the Captain’s stress when his fingers were laced behind his head, the detective with a firm grip, while being patted down?
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I definitely can.
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Rob, whatever generation you belong to, I would encourage you to watch all of the videos and especially listen to the tape of Lt. Emanation’s conversation with Captain Vaughn about his experience being questioned by the police. As to the Alexis and boyfriend stop, consider that the police could be concerned that any number of things could have been in the bag including firearms. Given the heightened tensions downtown during the tense and volatile BLM demonstrations that repeatedly shut down Broadway, I personally don’t find that to be an unreasonable concern. We know now because of the search that the bag was innocuous but what if that had not been the case and that something in the bag had been used to harm civilians? How would the police have been judged for letting that happen when they could have prevented it? Unfortunately, we live in a world now where these things are happening all too frequently. And what you experienced as spending a lot of wasted time asking personal questions, I saw as the police trying to get a take on who these people were and also by asking what sports the boyfriend played etc., an attempt to de-escalate the situation to be less scary while doing the checks they needed to do. No guns drawn, no shouting, no aggressive behavior. What you see as a waste of time I see as thoughtful and professional policing which yes, takes time.
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Your logic gives the police unlimited license to ask any question for any concern. It doesn’t matter if they thought there might be a firearm in the bag. The question is whether that concern was reasonable, or hysterical. Based on what we know, this concern was hysterical, and was invented to launch a line of inquiry at a citizen who was exercising his first amendment rights. And obviously, the subjects didn’t see the questioning as de-escalating. They have since complained about it and found it demoralizing and unnecessary. I tend to agree with them.
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Bob- you say: “It doesn’t matter if they thought there might be a firearm in the bag” and “Based on what we know, this concern was hysterical…and invented…” I would be curious to know what evidence you have that their concern was “hysterical and invented.” I am also wondering why Alexis Brown didn’t file a complaint as Captain Vaughn did, if she thought the stop was inappropriate.
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There is a process to hold police accountable foe what could be considered an unreasonable stop.
The person in this case has chosen not to exercise their rights to initiate that process.
So why are you still complaining? You’re more upset about it than the person in the actual confrontation.
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Saratoga BLM is a small angry mob who want a reason to believe they are better than others. That they are special. That they can stick it to “The Man” and get away with it. They have absolutely no interest whatsoever in uncovering truth that may be uncomfortable for them. Darryl Mount is their Tawana Brawley.
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I disagree with much of what ‘The Duke of York’ said. I think that the local BLM activists are a group of individuals who sincerely believe that Black Lives Matter. What they are missing is the fact that most Saratogians agree. They were actually victims of misinformation cleverly circulated by the Mount family attorney who is hoping to influence the community as he prepares for his civil lawsuit against the City. The local BLM activists were in search of a cause and attorney Breedlove provided it.
It is important though to hold activists responsible for their terrible behavior. They have undermined community support that they would otherwise have received with their disruptions, foul language and disregard for the rights of others.
Chris Mathiesen
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I wonder if there’ll be another march downtown.
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