Test of character

Early on the morning of May 7, Calvin Darling pulled his jacked-up Silverado pickup onto Flamingo Road at Ravenwood Drive, near Tenaya Way. Officer James Manor, approaching in a Metro police cruiser in answer to a 911 call, couldn't avoid Mr. Darling's truck.

Officer Manor died. Mr. Darling survived, though he was bloodied.

He grabbed his fire extinguisher and tried to put out the flames that engulfed the patrol car.

Police charged Calvin Darling with drunken driving and failure to yield the right of way to an emergency vehicle -- though a test showed Mr. Darling with a blood-alcohol level of 0.035, well below the legal limit of 0.08.

In a news conference hours after the crash, Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie insisted officer Manor and a second Metro officer responding to a domestic violence call had their sirens and emergency lights on.

Witnesses said otherwise.

Wednesday, the sheriff called an afternoon news conference to announce that an inspection of the electronics and lights on officer Manor's car, and other calculations made by an expert investigator, revealed the witnesses were right. Officer Manor was barrelling down a city street with a 45 mph speed limit, in the dead of night, going 109 mph with no emergency lights or sirens.

The sheriff said the department will be looking at ways Metro can avoid "making the same tragic mistake" in the future.

Good. Some mechanical device that would engage lights and sirens at speeds above 75 mph -- one which could be overridden by officers in special cases -- might be worth a look. Here's hoping the sheriff also makes sure no officer purposely misled him.

But the main point here is that a more cynical "top cop" might have been content to stand silent, himself, letting the case against Mr. Darling play out until public interest waned.

Instead, Doug Gillespie stepped up, going public with a set of facts that surely couldn't have made him particularly happy or comfortable.

"As your sheriff, it is extremely important to me that Metro continues to have a reputation of integrity and transparency," the sheriff said Wednesday.

The main qualification for the office of sheriff is not knowledge of the intricacies of police administration and budgeting -- though all that surely helps.

The main qualification for the office of sheriff is character. Again this week, Sheriff Doug Gillespie passed that test.