Trending
Once again, a video of a police stop has revealed the truth and allowed justice to be served. This time, it happened in Harrisburg, and the victim was a Black woman who happens to be a judge.
Sonya McKnight has been under investigation for more than a year, accused of tampering with evidence, official oppression, and obstruction of law, after she tried to help her son who had been stopped by police.
The charges cast a shadow on an otherwise stellar career of public service and subjected her to accusations that she blatantly misused her power as a magisterial district judge.
McKnight suffered the weight of these charges personally and professionally, suspended from her seat on the bench and not allowed to perform the duties Harrisburg voters elected her to do. But the voters re-elected her, despite the charges.
They apparently knew what Senior Judge Stephen B. Liberman concluded last week. McKnight was innocent.
In fact, the Harrisburg community knows McKnight well. She's been a contributor, someone with a winning personality and a commitment to public service. Harrisburg voters either ignored what police said about McKnight, or they didn't believe it.
Turns out, the community was right.
But it is baffling that two Harrisburg police officers could get it so wrong, if the judge is right.
The night they stopped McKnight's son, and he called her to the scene, police saw an "agitated" Black woman "storm" toward them, angry that police had pulled over her son.
But that's not what the video showed.
That night, police saw a belligerent Black woman bent on taking control and on intimidation.
That's not what the video showed.
And police said McKnight even went so far as to remove evidence from the scene without their permission.
That's not what the video showed.
The discrepancies were so great between the video that captured reality and the conflicted testimony of Officer Farida Kingsboro, attorney Brian McMonagle felt compelled to ask, "Do you want a lawyer?"
It is surprising that not only did McMonagle believe his client had done nothing wrong, but so did Harrisburg Police Commissioner Thomas C. Carter. In fact, the city's top cop said so, under oath. It compels us to ask some troubling questions:
* If the police commissioner thought the good judge had done nothing wrong, how is it Kingsboro thought so?
* With such a flimsy case, why did the Attorney General's Office decide to prosecute the case?
* And why did McKnight have to suffer through months of accusations that apparently were so baseless, the judge threw them all out without hesitation? Bear in mind this is a judge who said he's never done that before in his entire career.
McKnight is thanking God and her community for standing by her during this ordeal. So are we. Her attorney said the exoneration "restored my faith in the justice system." Maybe so. But the case has done nothing to restore the Black community's faith in police.
Instead, it has raised serious questions about how these police officers could so misinterpret what they saw and so misjudge the intentions and actions of a woman many in the Harrisburg community respect and admire.
There's another question it is reasonable to ask: how many lesser-known people without a top-notch attorney have been victims of police misjudgment?
These questions are worthy of an official investigation, as are the contradictions in Kingsboro's testimony.
Of course, we all should be grateful. Judge McKnight got to win her case in a court of law with a fair-minded judge.
Not everyone gets that chance.