Christopher St. Lawrence wears many hats in Rockland County: He's Ramapo Town Supervisor, Rockland County Sewage Commissioner, Chairman of Ramapo Local Development Corporation, Harvard graduate, Lieutenant Governor candidate, but now he's claiming to be a super cop for network television news crews covering the Lawrence Taylor rape scandal.
St. Lawrence is putting himself right in the middle of the scandal by declaring himself the police commissioner for the Town of Ramapo and appearing in virtually all the town's interviews concerning this case. St. Lawrence, as Town Supervisor may, in fact, be a civlian commissioner of his town's police department (we'll check into that), but he is not a law enforcement officer, he doesn't carry a badge, and it's disingenuous to see him present himself as such to CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC and CNN. See the damning clip after the fold:
I did a bit of Googling to find how many times Christopher St. Lawrence was referred to as Ramapo Police Commissioner in the media. Until Friday morning, the grand total of references was zero. For the hundreds of the times that there have been articles referencing crimes in Ramapo that have appeared in the Journal News, St. Lawrence is never referred to as police commissioner. Not once. Zip, nada, zero!
Even the town's web page for the Ramapo Police Department does not mention Christopher St. Lawrence at all. Peter Bower, the Police Chief, has his name gracing the top of that page.
But since Lawrence Taylor's arrest, Christopher St. Lawrence has been the face of the Ramapo Police Department and his name and title of Police Commissioner has come up 532 times and all in reference to this case. While the media is in a feeding frenzy over this high profile scandal, St. Lawrence is exploiting what is at best a vestigial role of his to have himself displayed as some sort of crime-fighting hero.
This is just another example of Christopher St. Lawrence's unabashed self-promotion. The "man who never met a TV satellite truck he didn't like" is exploiting the alleged rape of a 16-year girl to further his political ambitions. St. Lawrence has been running hard to become New York's next Lieutenant Governor, and this is just another example of how he will stop at nothing, even if it means exploiting a heinous crime against a child, to achieve his goals.
I can only hope that Andrew Cuomo can see through Christopher St. Lawrence's charade and he handpicks his running mate instead of giving someone like St. Lawrence the chance to duke it out in a primary.
This diary is cross posted at Left of the Hudson.