Nov 29, 2023 By Mike Jones 4 min read

A judge has dismissed all charges against three Greene County emergency officials accused of obstructing the investigation into a 911 dispatcher who refused to send an ambulance to a dying woman.

Senior Judge Katherine Emery last week dismissed the criminal cases against Gregory Leathers, Robert “Jeff” Rhodes and Richard Policz. She wrote in her opinion that “there is not a scintilla of evidence” that they acted maliciously or blocked investigators from accessing information within the 911 call center.

The three emergency management supervisors were charged last summer with evidence tampering and obstruction of justice after investigators accused them of providing incomplete records in response to a search warrant in 2020 following the death of Diania Kronk.

Kronk, 54, of Sycamore, died July 2, 2020 a day after family members called 911 asking for an ambulance to be sent to her house while she was suffering a medical emergency, although dispatcher Leon Price refused to do so. He was charged in June 2022 with involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and other counts in connection with Kronk’s death.

Lead investigator Zachary Sams accused the three supervisors of blocking access to information regarding standard operating procedures and other documents when he went to the operations center on two separate occasions days after Kronk’s death. But after reviewing the transcript of the joint preliminary hearing last October for the three men, Emery determined there was no prima facie evidence for District Attorney David Russo to proceed with the case.

In her written order and opinion filed Nov. 21, Emery said a “blue binder” that was the centerpiece of the prosecution’s obstruction case was never hidden from Sams and available for him through his search warrant that he executed on July 7 and 8 in 2020.

“The binder was in plain view and not concealed,” Emery wrote in her order. “It contains much extraneous information, some important, some trivial. There is not a scintilla of evidence that (Policz and Rhodes) INTENTIONALLY prevented Mr. Sams from obtaining it.”

The senior judge also appeared to take exception with how the search was handled by Sams, who was the Greene Regional police chief at the time of Kronk’s death and later became the lead county detective for the district attorney’s office. She added that it was “nonsense” that the binder was withheld from investigators at any point of the process.

“During the execution of the search warrants, Mr. Sams or his colleagues did not search for anything. They simply handed the warrant to Mr. Rhodes,” Emery wrote. “There is no merit to the argument that any employee concealed the binder from law enforcement.”

Rhodes was 911 coordinator at the time and Policz was the 911 operations and training coordinator, although he now serves as emergency management director after taking over that role from Leathers. While Rhodes and Policz were present at the 911 operations center when Sams executed the search warrant, Emery noted that Leathers was not there at the time.

“The record is devoid of any evidence that Defendant Leathers participated in any search of the 911 center,” Emery wrote in her opinion. “He never spoke to Mr. Sams. There is no evidence that Mr. Leathers interfered with the search.”

Russo was not available Tuesday morning when a reporter went to his office in the Greene County Courthouse, and he did not respond to a message seeking comment on the dismissal. Sams left his position as chief county detective shortly after Russo lost the Republican primary in May to challenger Brianna Vanata, who will take over as district attorney in January.

Defense attorneys David Pollock and Harry Cancelmi both slammed the handling of the investigation and Russo’s decision to file charges in the first place.

“That case is garbage and was filed for political purposes from the get-go,” said Pollock, who represented Leathers. “I’m just sorry that it took so long to get (the case) dismissed.”

“Mr. Rhodes is relieved this is over,” Cancelmi said about his client. “It cost him his time, it cost him money, and it cost him his reputation. This case should have never been filed at all.”

Tina Miller, who represented Policz, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Emery also dismissed lesser charges against Price, including official oppression and obstruction of justice, but she determined there was enough evidence for the case to proceed against him on the two misdemeanor counts of involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment. His defense attorney, Timothy Ross, declined to comment on the case.