Letter: It’s not the Crime, It’s the Cover-Up

For five months, city management resisted requests for public records regarding a Nov. 16 cell phone violation by City Manager Shohreh Dupuis. Now City staff’s grudging release of a police body cam video of the incident reminds one of the old adage, “It’s not the crime. It’s the cover-up. 

Rather than simply release the original video as City Council mandated, City staff produced its own misleading, edited version accompanied by deceptive commentary. Specifically, the commentary claims that the edited video “shows the entirety of the interaction” between Dupuis and ticketing officer Matt Gregg and that the only difference between the videos is that the edited version is annotated “to clarify the sequence of phone calls that prompted the traffic stop.” Both assertions are deceptive. Here’s why. 

Gregg concluded that Dupuis lied when she gave him the impression (for no good reason she has ever explained) that she happened to be talking to the officer’s boss, Police Chief Jeff Calvert, when her violation occurred. The original body cam video shows that Gregg observed the violation at 9:08 am for three seconds while phone records show Dupuis spoke to Calvert later. But the edited video speeds up the three-second segment to less than one second, making it impossible for the average viewer to observe that Dupuis’ violation happened before Dupuis spoke to Calvert. 

—The edited video has been strategically posted by City staff on the web before the unedited version in an apparent effort to discourage viewers from watching the latter. 

—The commentary fabricates a statement by Gregg that the original video shows he did not make, which distorts the context of Dupuis’ misleading statement to him. 

—The commentary repeatedly conflates Gregg’s observation of Dupuis’ cell phone violation, when she wasn’t talking to Calvert, with when Dupuis later pulled over her car, when she apparently was conversing with Calvert. 

—The commentary repeatedly asserts, without evidence, that Gregg misunderstood in a phone call with Calvert during the traffic stop that Calvert said he was not speaking with Dupuis at the time of the violation. Calvert has never publicly disclosed what he said. 

During more than three decades of representing major news organizations in dozens of public access matters, I have never witnessed such a deceptive presentation of a public record requested by a citizen. This constitutes a flagrant misuse of City Council’s directive and taxpayer funds.

James Grossberg, Laguna Beach