video: Senator Archambault’s Outburst Not His First - Threatened DEM Officer in 2008
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
The recent verbal explosion by State Senator Steven Archambault was not his first eruption. In a recent video of a Senate hearing Democrat Senator Archambault blasted a private citizen while testifying at a Senate Judiciary hearing on S183. This was not Archambault's first explosion according to 2010 article published by GoLocal when Archambault was a candidate for Attorney General.
This recent incident took place when the Executive Director for Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law, Terry Gorman, was giving providing testimony.
During Gorman's testimony, he noticed that several Senators on the dias were not paying attention and apparently laughing at him.
Gorman simply asked if his testimony was amusing and Archambault blasted him for questioning members of the Committee.
Late Monday night, Archambault posted the following apology to Archambault to Facebook: I would like to say that after hearing the tape, I did sound harsh. I have respect for Mr. Gorman, and I did apologize to him for my abrupt behavior. I also want to apologize to the great people of this state and to the institution I represent. In no way did I mean any disrespect to anyone and, at the end of the day, this is the people's house. More importantly, I have to ask God for forgiveness from being harsh. Again, I apologize.
The report on the incident between Archambault and a Enforcement Officer of the Department of Environmental Management can be read below. The story was written by then GoLocal News Editor Stephen Beale.
In 2010, GoLocal reported:
Attorney General candidate Stephen Archambault bullied a law enforcement officer in a Mel Gibson-style rant during a routine traffic stop in 2008, according to a police report on the incident that GoLocalProv has obtained.
According to the report, Archambault launched into an expletive-ridden tirade about how the officer had no jurisdiction to pull him over and was risking his career by doing so.
“This is not worth f—ing up your career over,” Archambault told Officer Adam Hill during the roadside altercation, according to the incident report on the April 22 stop. “You have no idea who you’re talking to. You picked the wrong guy to pull over.”
Archambault—for reasons that are not clear in the report—mentioned that he had a pilot’s license, a master scuba diver certification, and 4th-degree black belt.
He then informed the officer that, “I will be running for Attorney General for the State of RI in 2010 with the full backing of the state Democratic Party, and I will win!” according to the report.
Archambault did not formally announce his run for Attorney General until about a year later. And he ended up not winning the state party endorsement this summer.
Spokesman Claims Story Is Made Up
Rob Horowitz, a campaign spokesman for Archambault, suggested the whole account had been made up. “He may have made this up because he acted inappropriately and was attempting to cover his tracks,” Horowitz said.
According to the officer, Archambault had been speeding and swerving through traffic on Route 4 in Scituate. When the officer ran the back plate on Archambault’s Nissan SUV, it turned up stolen.
After Hill pulled in for a closer look, he saw Archambault, a retired Jamestown police officer, holding his badge up to the window and shouting at him to slow down.
After that, the two cars played a game of cat-and-mouse as Hill tried to navigate behind the car. “I was taken aback at this behavior and thought the operator was unstable,” the officer wrote. “I was confused as I did not believe an off-duty police officer would be displaying such behavior.”
Archambault tells officer ‘You’re f—ing up, brother’
Eventually, Archambault pulled over—before Hill turned on his emergency lights or siren. Archambault told Hill he had rented the car because his BMW was in the shop.
But when Hill asked for rental documents or receipts to confirm that, Archambault lit into him. “‘You’re f—ing up, brother. You have no jurisdiction to ask me for that,” Hill recalled Archambault saying.
Hill repeated that the plates had turned up stolen. “He did not believe me and suggested that I have [an] ego problem, I’m on a power trip, and I was doing all this because he was driving faster than me.”
It turns out that the plates had been reissued by the DMV—but Archambault, according to the officer’s account, was upset that he had to be bothered in the first place and asked if his name would appear in any official reports.
“He then stated, ‘Now I guess there is one question left to answer. When my name is researched, is my name going to come up in a DEM incident report?’” Hill states in his report.
AG Campaign Disputes Account
The Archambault campaign last night disputed the whole account.
“The DEM officer’s account of the event is flat out inaccurate and wrong. The facts are that the DEM official was speeding. When he stopped at a light, Mr. Archambault indicated he should slow down,” said Archambault spokesman Rob Horowitz.
“He became agitated and then followed Mr. Archambault closely and began to flash his lights. Mr. Archambault pulled over. The DEM official was out of his jurisdiction and had no authority to stop Mr. Archambault. The bottom line is that Mr. Archambault broke no traffic laws.”
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