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<p>Because of some tragic, yet isolated, incidents throughout the country in which a white police officer killed a black person, &#8220;Black Lives Matter&#8221; was born.</p><p>And because some of these occurrences were blown out of proportion because of race-baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and the first black President of the United States, police officers as a group have unjustifiably come under attack, accused of being innately racist and corrupt.</p><p>There are good cops and bad ones. Good teachers and bad ones. Good priests and bad ones.</p><p>Regarding the police, most of us know and appreciate that they are there to protect us. We also don&#8217;t need a radical group to remind us that black lives matter. We know they do.</p><p>But you know what else matters? Justice. Justice for all.</p><p>So what happened on Dec. 21, 2014, at 2:30 a.m. and after in Larksville is unsettling on many levels. It is yet another case in which an alleged cover-up may prove to be worse than the crime.</p><p>Larksville Police Chief John Edwards said as much in a passionate Facebook post last Wednesday.</p><p>&#8220;Cover-up case headed to trial&#8221; was the front page headline in Tuesday&#8217;s Times Leader.</p><p>The case involves serious allegations that two area police officers John Fronzoni and Michael Thomas attempted to cover up a crash after Fronzoni&#8217;s friend William Ritsick, of Nanticoke, smashed his vehicle into a pole in Larksville.</p><p>Fronzoni, then a full-time Larksville firefighter and part-time Courtdale assistant police chief, wasn&#8217;t on duty at the time but magically appeared at the scene shortly after the accident. One firefighter told police that Fronzoni said, &#8220;This accident never happened.&#8221; Larksville fire engineer Robert Palchanis said Fronzoni told him &#8220;to not totally fill out&#8221; his incident report, the TL reported.</p><p>Thomas, then a Larksville police officer, was charged with obstruction of justice, hindering apprehension and tampering with evidence. Witnesses said they overheard Thomas tell Fronzoni , who allegedly attempted to hook Ritsick&#8217;s car to a tow truck, to &#8220;get out of here.&#8221;</p><p>Trucksville District Justice James Tupper, who took a month to decide whether to send any of these charges to county court, dismissed all the charges against Thomas on Monday, saying he found no evidence of wrongdoing. Larksville Police Chief Edwards said he didn&#8217;t believe Thomas committed any crimes but that he did violate department policies by not calling in a third party if he was uncomfortable because of a personal relationship,&#8221; according to a local news report.</p><p>Chief Edwards said Thomas, who resigned five days later, became confrontational and argumentative when he questioned him about the accident. Thomas now works for the Plymouth Borough Police Department.</p><p>Tupper, a former cop himself, dropped 16 of the 19 charges against Fronzoni. Maybe he concluded that state prosecutors over reacted by filing all those charges. Fronzoni now faces single charges of intimidating a witness, obstruction of justice and hindering apprehension instead of multiple charges of each of those crimes .</p><p>Of his decision, Tupper said, &#8220;I did not take this lightly.&#8221; Apparently not, since it took him a month to reach it.</p><p>Posting on Facebook, Chief Edwards wrote, &#8220;Why should we expect the general public to obey laws that we ourselves feel don&#8217;t apply to us? Why should a police department that tolerates this type of behavior expect to have the trust and respect of its residents? Without trust and respect a police department is crippled.&#8221;</p><p>Edwards said he was careful to not conduct an in-house investigation of this incident because his officers were involved. Instead, he went to the Luzerne County District Attorney&#8217;s Office, which contacted the state Attorney General&#8217;s Office. Both Fronzoni and Thomas faced fewer charges at first, but state prosecutors, after their own investigation, filed numerous others against them. They took this case that seriously.</p><p>&#8220;We set ourselves up for failure from the word go when one police officer allows another to compromise the integrity of the whole department,&#8221; Chief Edwards also wrote. &#8220;In the subculture of the police profession some think the right thing and only thing is loyalty.&#8221; Edwards said he decided to speak out to dispel the perception by some that there was a conspiracy among elected officials to sweep this incident under the carpet.</p><p>&#8220;In this profession with all the split-second decisions made under stress, mistakes are a foregone conclusion. Last December mistakes were made, but rather than admit this fact every effort was made to circumvent the truth,&#8221; Edwards said.</p><p>Wow, talk about forthrightness.</p><p>He also was spot on in recognizing why many of us have become so disillusioned with our justice system and our other institutions.</p><p>&#8220;One of the greatest obstacles we face is the hypocrisy which a minority in law enforcement bring down upon the whole profession. That when a person who is the friend or family member of the &#8216;right people,&#8217; they are not subject to prosecution the same way as a &#8216;connected person.&#8217; This hypocrisy is embedded in the minds of society and from what I&#8217;ve seen it is alive and well in Luzerne County.&#8221;</p><p>It is indeed. So what do we do about this?</p><p>For starters, every chance we get, we can vote into office men and women who fully understand that they are our public servants. In turn, they will hopefully appoint other upstanding and conscientious individuals, such as Larksville Police Chief John Edwards, who clearly recognize that their ultimate responsibility is to those they serve.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Zeroing In</p><p>Betty Roccograndi</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Betty Roccograndi is a Wyoming Valley resident and an award-winning journalist. Her column appears every Sunday in the Times Leader.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Zeroing In: When it comes to police, justice for all is what truly matters