Talk about entitlement! Sandra Doorley, Monroe County District Attorney in upstate New York, pulled rank last Monday as she was stopped in a Rochester suburb because her SUV was speeding 20 mph over the limit.
Police Officer Cameron Crisafulli noticed the SUV as it sped by around 5.30 pm, turned on his lights and sirens and went after the SUV, signaling it should pull over. However, the SUV didn’t stop and drove on until it pulled into the side garage of a house half a mile away.
In hot pursuit, Officer Crisafulli pulled up outside the garage. Out came the driver, a woman, who told him, “I’m the D.A. I was going 55 coming home from work”. The agent reminded her the speed limit was 35 mph on that road. “I don’t really care”, Ms. Doorley apparently replied.
The exchanged was recorded by Officer Crisafulli’s body camera and released a few days later by the Webster Police Department. It shows Ms. Doorely getting angry at the officer and using vulgar names to address him. Another officer then arrives on the scene and identifies himself as Officer Crisafulli’s supervisor, threatening Doorley with arrest for refusing to stop. The threat however was not followed through.
Sandra Doorley, originally elected as a Democrat, switched to the Republican party in 2016.
Groups linked with the Black Lives Matter movement called Ms. Doorley’s behavior an example of white privilege. At one point, the DA called the police chief Dennis Kohmeier, on the phone asking him to tell the officers to leave her in peace and she passed the phone to Officer Crisafulli, then walked into her house saying “Just go away”.
The release of the video created a furious backlash involving protests and a statement on Sunday by NY governor Kathy Hochul, explaining she had reported Ms. Doorley to the State Commission because she had “undermined her ability to hold others accountable for violating the law”.
On a video Sunday night, Ms. Doorley apologized. “What I did was wrong, no excuses,” she says in the video. “I didn’t treat this officer with the respect that he deserved.” She added she is under a lot of stress because of the criminal situation in Rochester, with three murders taking places in less than two months.
