City Manager, Tom Bonfield, finally came out Monday to say something about the Jesus Huerte fiasco. I don't envy Bonfield. His task is made more difficult by the weak Durham Police Chief, Jose Lopez. The WRAL report gave a hint at where the investigation is going: training. That means, dear readers, that at least Bonfield thinks the SBI is looking at an officer who failed to adequately frisk a detainee. In fact, there are two possible explanations.
One is, Officer Samuel Duncan failed to frisk Jesus Huerte properly and Huerte had a gun concealed on his person. At some point Huerte decided to remove the gun and it went off, killing him.
The other possible explanation is, some other detainee had a gun and decided to abandon it in the car that Duncan signed out for his fateful shift. Somehow the gun went off killing Huerte.
Neither explanation looks good for Duncan. One of his responsibilities when taking over a police car is to check it for weapons. Another of his responsibilities is to properly frisk suspects arrested before they are transported. Both responsibilities are found in the DPD's General Order Book.
None of this is to excuse the DPD's conduct. They have dribbled out information long after it was available to them. If Jose Lopez is not up to the task of effective communication, then Tom Bonfield needs to make a change in the Chief's office.
Walt-in-Durham
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