Talk:Darryl De Sousa/GA1

GA review

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Nominator: Queen of Hearts (talk · contribs) 05:32, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 22:23, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Signing on, ping me if I don't finish within roughly a week. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:23, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

@Premeditated Chaos – ping as requested, although feel free to take as long as you want (God knows I've left reviews hanging for far too long). charlotte ^👸♥ 18:57, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello, sorry, I am a sinner and a vagabond, but I am here reporting for duty. I don't think I've done a review for you before, so the general rundown is that I basically read it the same way I would a FAC and make comments. I'm happy to discuss suggestions and I'll never try to fail you on a nitpick that doesn't make the article fail the GACR. I often suggest substitute phrasing but I'm by no means insistent on it. Please forgive my intuitive sense of grammar and lack of technical terminology. Away we go!

Lead

• Maybe link Tax evasion in the United States? Since it's kind of fun that we have that

  Linking to the specific US article when the text just says "tax evasion" feels a bit EGGy to me, although I will add a link to tax evasion

• "having served as deputy commissioner of the Patrol Bureau when he was appointed" - the past tense here is off, I think. It suggests that he had already finished serving in this position by the time he was appointed commish. "and was serving as" would work in its place

  done

• "appointed commissioner" follows the previous sentence using "appointed as acting commissioner". Repeated phrases always feel like they interrupt the flow - can it be written around?

  changed to "his appointment", does that work?

  Yup

• "and Pugh placed De Sousa" I might split this portion off into its own sentence and reword "while Gary Tuggle served as acting commissioner". It reads a bit passively, like he just happened to fall into the job, but I assume Pugh named him to the post?

  Split the sentence. Reguarding the second bit, I think Pugh appointed him? But deputy commissioner of the Operatons Bureau is the second highest position in the department, so it could be a "line of succession" thing, and none of the sources I looked at specify

  Fair enough

• "re-arraigned" where did we say he was arraigned the first time? (This may just be a Canadian problem since we don't use that word. Are you typically arraigned at an indictment? If so, disregard this, since you did mention an indictment)

  Yes, he was first arraigned at the indictment

  Gotcha, if that's just a Canadian terminology thing then I think you're probably fine to leave it as-is

• "a series of tax evasion" I don't know that the grammar agrees here? A series is plural normally. "also admitting to other tax infractions beginning in 1999" maybe?

  I think "series" is correct here? He committed multiple tax infractions from 1999 to 2015. Although I changed it to "a series of tax infractions", since he didn't completely evade until 2013

  Yeah, series is fine, it's just that it needed a plural following it; your version is good

• "The evasion was linked to tips from the GTTF, which his attorney countered by saying that he was unaware their tips were illegal." I had to look at the body before I understood that GTTF people were giving him tips on the evasion, not tipping the government off to his crimes in revenge. Possibly this is a me problem, but could we reword?

  Changed to "Investigators discovered that the GTTF gave De Sousa tips on avoiding taxes"

  Tweaked to "had given" since it was the past of the past, but otherwise looks good

Career

• You probably want to clarify that it's Jamaica, Queens, not Jamaica, the country

  I feel like this is implied by Queens being mentioned in the previous section and the sentence saying that he only saw white NYPD officers

  Apologies, I completely failed to process the previous mention (I literally have no idea how, I'm going to blame ADHD)

• "inspired by a lieutenant that was killed on duty." This may not be in the source, but is this someone he knew or just heard about somewhere?

  Knew, which I added. I also realized the source mentioned the lieutenant's surname but not his first name; I added a newspaper source about the killing for the first name and middle initial. (yes, that's probably technically OR, but I don't really care – same rank, same surname, was killed on duty, timeframe fits, I would be very surprised if they were different people.)

  I've never been one to stand on technicalities.

• "He served as deputy..." same as in the lead. To be honest, I would flip this whole sentence and reword a bit. Chronological or rank order would be a more logical way to list things; it feels odd to go from 2nd-last position, last position, then back to a host of other positions that are in no discernible order. I might also suggest a footnote explaining or at least ranking these positions, since their significance is not obvious to the layman.
  • 🔴
• Every time I click on a blue linked name in this article, the lead always ends with "and then they were indicted for XYZ" and it's like, okay I know this is Baltimore, but are there ANY people in a 20 mile radius that haven't been indicted by a grand jury for some shit?

  I'm within a 20 mile radius of Baltimore! Although I am not notable or a politician, probably for the best

• "Richard Hite, a chief of the Indianapolis Police Department who earlier served the BPD, described De Sousa as having "boundless energy" and some believed that De Sousa being African American would improve the morale of African American officers." - two issues here...Hite's comment should be a separate sentence from the morale boosting, as they have nothing to do with one another. Second, who are the "some"? This is opinion that needs to be better attributed than that

  Split; annoyingly, the source there makes it sound like it was multiple people, but they only named one person, so I singled them out

• What is the Baltimore Fishbowl, since there's no article? Newspaper? Local website? Magazine?

  Added "news website", which seems to also be what Special:Undelete/Draft:Baltimore Fishbowl says

• In what way did the Fishbowl find this situation similar to the 2012 one? Just noting a comparison doesn't really tell the reader much

  Elaborated

• "He also announced" I think you can ditch the also without losing meaning

  Reworded to "He also planned to send"

• "While hot-spot policing was previously successful in Baltimore" - when? successful by what metric? (also, I might use "had been" vs "was")
• "it forced the city to pay settlements with people who claimed the BPD violated their civil rights." this feels a bit like it elides the fact that it would have been BPD officers, not hot spot policing, that violated those peoples' civil rights. Might revise to something like "the city had also paid settlements to [X] people for civil rights violations by BPD officers during the time these policies were in effect", perhaps. The news source you're using for this claim is a little scant; there must be something more concrete available?
  • 🔴
• "monitoring the BPD... to advise the BPD" in the same sentence. Could be written around

  Changed to "advise the department"?

• "the killings of Jackson..." in one sentence then "the killings and" ... and "about the killings" in the next, followed again by "the killings" in the next. Gets a little noticeable

  changed the 2nd to "them" and 3rd to "the incidents"

• It still amazes me how much law enforcement continues to fetishize polygraphs. A whole unit just to randomly poly people.
• This is definitely the style wonk in me, but the para that starts with "On February 9, 2018..." could probably be made a little more dynamic. Most of the sentences are "He [verb]ed this. He [verb]ed that."

  Tried to change some

• "He denied claims" Thomas did, or De Sousa?

  De Sousa

• I would mention the nature of the complaints against Casella, because currently you don't in the text, leaving the reader to draw the context of what they were from De Sousa's denials that that's what they were
• "On February 13, 2018..." since this has to do with these GTTF guys and not with De Sousa's management of the dept, it should be its own paragraph (also, currently it's ambiguous as to whether De Sousa's musings on moving the IA dept to the mayor's office have any relation to the GTTF guys being found guilty - can you clarify?)

  Split, and yes they were – expanded

• "when the BPD shifted towards zero tolerance" when was that

  When Martin O'Malley a rare Baltimore politician who hasn't become a criminal (that we know of) became mayor, so the early 2000s, but that feels OR when the source doesn't mention him or a time period

  Hmm. There must be a source that discusses the timeframe for the shift somewhere. Otherwise as a reader it's hard to grasp the significance of the return. If the program was gone for two months, that's less significant than if it was gone for 20 years.

• I noticed here that the last sentence about the crowd applauding technically read like the crowd had announced the change, so I revised a bit, feel free to reword if you like

Tax evasion

• "despite being an employee of the BPD" The "despite" feels a shade editorial, as if being a BPD officer necessarily means doing one's taxes

  changed to while

• It's not clear from the text what Darryl Strange was a spokesman for, the BPD or something else. Looks like he was officially Pugh's press secretary, if we could mention that

  changed to "Pugh's spokesman"

• "as he did when De Sousa was suspended" I think this is unnecessary since we just mentioned the suspension

  removed

• "The BPD also said..." I'm not sure what this sentence is providing for the article. Tbh the source isn't even really clear on what they're saying there, and none of the other 3 cited sources mention anything about retirement

  He hypothetically could've resigned as commissioner but remained in the department, so I think it is relevant

• "De Sousa was scheduled to be re-arraigned on December 18" since the re-arraignment went ahead, I'd clip the "scheduled to" and maybe combine it with the first half of the next sentence to smooth the prose

  done and done

• Since it's a redlink, what's a lock in letter?

  I feel like "preventing the BPD from reducing De Sousa's withholdings without approval" sufficiently explains it?

• "the GTTF's tips" could safely trim to "their tips" or "the tips" since you just said GTTF

  done

• "with Denise describing growing up with Darryl in New York City, saying he took his great-aunts to doctor appointments and waiting until midnight to walk his mother, who had Alzheimer's disease, home." this feels a bit like unnecessary detail - we can say that she vouched for his character as a family man without having to get into all this. Same for Sanders, I think

  cut

• Not sure why we need to repeat the scheduled release day twice.

  removed

Release

• Is there any reason to believe De Sousa was not released on Nov 11? If not, I think we could trim "said he was" and just say he was released

  meh – annoyingly, no sources reported on when he was released, but he was set to be released 8 months earlier. would be a weird thing to lie about, but is possible, so idk

• First post-release interview or first interview ever? Either way, not sure public is needed, since most interviews are not private

  Post-release; removed public

• "He believed that the deal..." the sentence is a bit breathless with the two ands in there.

  changed to ", saying"

Okay, that's all I got, sorry it took me so long. I've replied to some changes above and made a few minor tweaks myself. Added two red dots for things that haven't been addressed that I think do need looking at. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:58, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Apologies for forgetting about this – I will respond later today. charlotte ^👸♥ 08:10, 20 April 2025 (UTC)