who is kenneth rachal?
According to a 05 february 2008, gannett/town talk story link | three page .pdf , kenneth rachal, appears to be a loose cannon with a history of aberrant behavior. two examples from the town talk story: In 2002 officer rachal's police k-9 dog, "rudy" died after officer rachal left him unattended in his car for six hours.
click here to download ten page .pdf
In what could pass for a case of road rage is the 1999 incident involving a sixteen year old kid who made the mistake of pulling out in front of officer rachal (who was off duty and in his civilian vehicle) who was then chased around town by officer rachal. when the kid who was scared because this strange automobile was chasing him around, finally pulled over - because an alexandria police car finally intervened - the kid, like ms. moses almost eight years later, was pulled from his car by a civilian clad officer rachal and thrown to the ground.
In the moses incident and after three civil service board hearings the board votes 3 - 2 to reinstate officer rachal. notice how neither the gannett/town talk in their report or the media general/kalb in theirs bother to name the three board members who voted to reinstate officer rachal or whether the vote was public or not. this is more of the main stream media's habit of leaving out important information in their stories.
Police officers roar with laughter at tasering of doris moses
In the officer.com forums, a forum only for police officers these police officers miss the point that officer rachal had no probable cause to pull ms. moses over in the first place. their only concern is the act of tasering someone and getting away with it and not in the validity of the legality of their actions leading up to it. ~ link
this is another indication of the need for a citizens review board for the police department as explained here. The city of alexandria has thirty days to appeal the civil service board ruling and for the sake of alexandrians safety we sure hope they do so.
For more information click the 'shocking apd video' label in the footer of this post.