Officials Say No Cover-Up in Gibson Arrest
TMZ has info on the report issued by the independent panel that reviewed procedures in the Mel Gibson arrest, and the conclusion is -- no cover-up.
As you may recall, on the day of the arrest, TMZ was told by Sheriff's officials that it was "without incident." In fact, Gibson went on a rant which included an anti-semitic tirade. We obtained and published four pages of an arrest report outlining Gibson's conduct that had been removed from the official report.
In its findings, the review commission noted that the four pages included "inflammatory comments." Now here's the justification for what went down.
"Because of a concern about certain information gathered during the arrest falling prematurely into the hands of media sources and because there was no clear Departmental guidance provided on how to handle this scenario presented, supervisors made spontaneous decisions with regard to how to package the information and describe the arrest. While these decisions do not indicate a violation of department policy, and were fairly sensible, they do point out the need for creating a thoughtful and systematic approach for how to handle future similar scenarios."
The findings go on -- "The initial response from first and second level supervisors was to order that the comments be entirely stricken from the police report as unnecessary. However, before being implemented, that instruction was modified by the unit commander, who proposed that the comments not be included in the narrative of the report but that they be placed instead in a supplemental report."
Here's the upshot from the review panel: "In sum, the collection and documentation of information incident to the arrest was timely and appropriately provided to the District Attorney so that he could make appropriate charging decisions."
