In the Charleston Gazette today, there is an article detailing excessive force complaints by West Liberty University students against the Charleston Police Department.  First sentence of the article: the mayor is speaking out to the media, defending the officers and essentially denouncing the complaints as lies.  The article contains numerous statements from the police, as well as the mayor, and has statements from numerous university officials and students who witnessed the incident.

The students and university officials have every right to voice their outrage about what happened.  However, the mayor was wrong to make statements to the media, only a couple of days after the incident occurred, denouncing the complaints as lies.  There obviously has been no legitimate internal investigation of the complaints, and certainly no independent or unbiased investigation.  In my experience, when a mayor comes out and speaks to the media, they are worried.