WEBSTER, NY– A prosecutor in New York state apologized Monday after police video showed her cursing at an officer who tried to give her a ticket and telling him to “just go away.”
“Last Monday I failed your standards and the standards I hold myself to, and for that I am so sorry,” Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Dooley said, referring to the April 22 incident in which an officer from suburban Webster in Rochester tried to pull her over for speeding 20 miles per hour, but she refused to stop.
Body camera footage released by the Webster Police Department on Friday shows a tense confrontation between Doorley and Officer Cameron Crisafulli in her garage, where she was driving instead of stopping.
“I am the prosecutor,” Doorley said in the video. “I was just getting home from work.”
The officer then told her that she was driving 88 km/h in a 56 km/h zone. Doorley responded, “I don’t really care.”
When Crisafulli asked if she heard his siren when he tried to stop her, she said, “No, I actually didn’t. I was on the phone.”
Instead of complying with Crisafulli’s orders to remain near her vehicle, Doorley called his boss, Police Chief Dennis Kohlmeier, and said, “Can you please tell him to leave me alone?”
She then handed the officer her cell phone and said, “Do you want to talk to Dennis? This is ridiculous.”
She then told the officer to “get out of my house,” using a curse word, and said, “I have no business with you right now.”
After releasing the video, Governor Kathy Hochul asked the state Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct to review the incident.
“Earlier today, I referred the Monroe County District Attorney to the Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct following the release of police bodycam footage showing her claiming she is above the law, attempting to use her public office to avoid accountability evading and behaving unprofessionally towards a police officer. just trying to do his job,” Hochul said in a statement.
In her apology video, Doorley, who has been a prosecutor since 2012, said she accepts she was speeding and will pay the fine.
She said she will also refer the case to the district attorney of another unnamed county for review and will undergo ethics training “to remind myself that professionalism matters.”
Doorley said in the video that she had had a rough day at work dealing with three homicides and that her husband had received frightening medical news.
“But we all have bad days and stress, and it was wrong of me to take it out on an officer who was just doing his job,” Doorley said.
“I am humiliated by my own stupidity,” she concluded.