Saratoga County District Attorney Karen Heggen will not ask a criminal grand jury to look at the situation surrounding Darryl Mount Jr.’s death that occurred in 2014. Nor will she convene a rarely-used non-criminal grand jury to look at then-Chief Gregory Veitch’s actions surrounding any investigation into police misconduct. These investagative grand juries are allowed in certain situations by law, but the “only action” a grand jury such as this can take if they did find a problem would be to “make a recommendation [for his, Veitch's] removal or disciplinary action.” This would be a waste of time and money, she says, since Veitch retired in 2018.
At issue is the death of Darryl Mount, Jr. a biracial man who police say banged his girlfriends’ head against the wall of a building in downtown Saratoga Springs and then ran when police pursued him late one night in August 2013. According to police, he climbed scaffolding on a nearby building then fell. The fall led to his coma, and he died months later in 2014.
Heggen's decision was made public in a letter she wrote to Saratoga Springs Mayor Ronald Kim in response to a letter the mayor wrote to her, asking that a grand jury look into the situation surrounding the Mount's death and any subsequent police investigation of officers' use of force. His family believes Mount was beaten by police, that he did not fall.
The mayor had written the letter after the Saratoga Springs City Council unanimously passed a resolution asking that he do so. It was a resolution brought forward by Commissioner of Public Safety James Montagnino at the Jan. 4 meeting.
Montagnino tells FoothillsBusinessDaily.com that he will bring another resolution to the city council at their next meeting, asking that the mayor write another letter, this one to Gov. Kathy Hochul asking her to authorize the state Attorney General “to complete the grand jury investigation itself.”
In an interview Heggen tells FoothillsBusinessDaily.com that the letter of January 4, 2022 from the Mayor’s office was the first time that she had been asked officially to look at this case.
“I’ve gone and sought everything I can, including everything filed in the civil case,” she said in an interview on Friday Feb. 4, adding later that people have accused her in the press of lacking leadership, but she countered: “I’m showing my leadership by fulfilling my statutory obligation as district attorney.”
She said legally and ethically she needs to see a “good faith” reason to ask the grand jury to investigate.
“I do not,” she said, adding that thus far no one has brought "a modicum of evidence" of police wrong-doing.
In the letter to the mayor, she says that she sees evidence that Mount may have committed a crime, but none that the police may have committed a crime, so a criminal Grand Jury would be inappropriate.
In the situation that asks for an investigative grand jury that would look into malfeasance or negligence on the part of the police or other public officials, she also said that she saw no need.
The grand jury would only be able to offer discipline or similar action over Chief Veitch if he actually did mislead the public about an internal investigation into use of force. Veitch retired in 2018, so the advice of the grand jury would be moot, she said.
In an interview, she said that she had no foreknowledge of Veitch’s testimony under oath that was brought to light in 2018, years after the incident.
Heggen was assistant DA at the time of the incident and became acting DA a few months after Mount’s death. By the time that the testimony came forward, the civil case had been years in process, yet neither side came forward asking for a grand jury investigation, she said. The Jan. 4 letter was the first time she was officially asked, she said.
If there is a problem with internal affairs investigations, she said, the city council and the city’s police department could make policy changes. It is not a matter for grand juries but for politicians.
Montagnino calls some of this into question.
At the time of the incident, the person in charge of forming an internal investigation unit was the chief himself, and if he did not want to do it, it was not done, the commissioner said.
Although the DA says that the matter is being pursued in civil litigation, Montagnino sees no reason that a criminal one, if needed, could not also be pursued.
“You don’t have to ask the prosecutor to act when the prosecutor becomes aware," Montagnino said in an interview. “Why do you need somebody else to ask you to act when you see something that screams out misconduct?”
If nothing else, a grand jury investigation he believes would bring some clarity, he said.
The grand jury could offer immunity to many involved and therefore they could tell the truth as they see it. Although little could be done to any officer who has already left the police department, a lot could be clarified and used to create better policy and to understand what happened.
In one respect the DA and the commissioner both agree: the policies and procedures governing internal affairs investigations could be adjusted at the city and department level. Some of the policies were changed when the Saratoga Springs Police Department began to follow Lexipol rules, Montagnino said.