Scared to Tell the Truth

A few nights ago on the news, it was mentioned that The Northwest Herald would have a complete story on the videotape of State Police Officer Kroncke hitting a prisoner in handcuffs and knocking him out for almost an hour. Kroncke also repeatedly slapped Kevin Gaughan, who was there to file a complaint against Marengo police officer Scott Crawford. This was all caught on tape. It took over a year for the courts to release the tape to the Gaughans under a subpoena. Now, this tape and an exclusive interview with the Gaughans was given to both CBS, channel 2 and the NW Herald. Viewers all across Illinois, and indeed, the country, would be allowed to see acts of police brutality that were shocking and demand action.Is this what happened?No, the State Police lawyers intimidated CBS and the NW Herald and threatened to sue them if they came out with the contents of this tape. The State’s Attorney’s Office for McHenry County put pressure on our supposedly independent newspaper for McHenry County, the NW Herald, to not publish the article. They did publish it, but it was a watered down version of the what they originally planned to publish. First of all, there were no interesting articles on the front page that day, except an event that was completely out of the County and in Elburn. So, there was no reason not to put this shocking and interesting event right in front for everyone to read. Instead, it winds up in the local section, which few people view. At the top of the article there is an announcement that the State Police say the video is not what it seems. In what way? I watched the video, as you may too, and there is no other way that I can see to interpret the events that take place on it. Sure enough, in the article there is also a quote from the state police, saying what? Why, that they believe that the video is not what it seems, of course!! How does THAT prove that point is beyond me. There was no reason for the NW Herald to put such an asinine quote in their article, instead of intelligently describing what had taken place in the video and interviewing the Gaughans about the events of that day. I can’t believe that the NW Herald took something that could have made a fantastic front page story, full of interesting details, and made it into THIS pathetic little article. Why did they do it? Fears of lawsuits and pressure from the State’s Attorney’s office and the State Police. Its ridiculous. This is supposedly an independent paper that serves McHenry County. Yeah, right! Apparently, the news they provide is biased toward those in authority. We have contacted the NW Herald and received a response back that they are “still working on it”. Still working on what? They have not come out with anything since they told us this and it has been over a week. I don’t think they plan on doing so.Here is a site where you can view the tape in question:

http://marengogazette.blogspot.com/

June 30, 2006