Justine Damond was "ripped from our arms," father says at rally

MINNEAPOLIS –The father and the fiance of an Australian woman shot to death by a Minneapolis police officer responding to her 911 call grieved at a public memorial service Friday night, the same time the family had planned to be on a plane to her wedding. 

Justine Damond‘s father, John Ruszczyk, choked back tears as he vowed to find justice for his 40-year-old daughter, whom he described as being “ripped from our arms.”

“We should be walking down the street smiling and laughing,” he said of his first visit to Minneapolis. “But now every step on the foot path is very painful. I feel crushed by sorrow.”

Hundreds of people, many wearing heart-shaped stickers, attended the memorial service. An Australian flag was displayed prominently on the stage next to Damond’s picture.

Her fiance, Don Damond, said it “felt like a privilege to love Justine.” They were getting married next week in Hawaii, and he pointed out the painful irony that the service – held at a lakefront stage near her home in southwest Minneapolis – coincided with the family’s original travel plans. 

He read some of the uplifting messages she would free-write every morning and called her a “living example of self-mastery.”

“I have immense gratitude for being the one she chose,” Don Damond said. “In Australia, they call it ‘you’re punching above your weight.’ I really had to step up to be at her level.”

Her family has set up the Justine Damond Social Justice Fund, which will support causes important to her, including those promoting equal treatment for all. 

As Damond’s loved ones mourned their loss, the investigation into her death moved forward. A judge approved a search warrant for investigators to examine the smartphones of two Minneapolis police officers in the shooting. 

The search warrant application was filed Thursday by an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The agent requested permission to download data from the iPhones issued by the Minneapolis Police Department.

The application states that the information “may more clearly define” the officers’ actions before and after she was killed on July 15. Investigators have said Officer Mohamed Noor shot the 40-year-old woman after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault near her home.

Noor’s partner, Officer Matthew Harrity, told investigators a noise startled him just before Damond approached their police SUV. Noor was in the passenger seat and shot Damond through the open driver-side window. Noor has declined to be interviewed by investigators and cannot be compelled to do so.

The two officers had not activated their body cameras. Minneapolis police officers are now required to have those cameras on when they respond to calls or make traffic stops.

Damond’s death led to a shake-up at the top of the Minneapolis Police Department. Police Chief Janee Harteau resigned at the request of Mayor Betsy Hodges, who said the department needed new leadership. Hodges nominated Medaria Arradondo, who had been assistant chief, to become chief.

This week a Minneapolis City Council committee unanimously endorsed Arradondo’s nomination. 

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Derek Jeter will be prepared but will he succeed as an owner?

We know him as a man who wore a pinstriped suit to work for 20 years but now, we cannot even be certain Derek Jeter will continue to wear that attire once he is in place as part of the Bruce Sherman-led ownership group that has reached an agreement in principle to purchase the Marlins for $1.2 billion.

Indeed, conjuring visions of Jeter running the baseball and business operations from behind a desk in South Florida leaves us with essentially a blank slate in the aftermath of two decades in the land of Page Six and the epicenter of baseball, through which No. 2 revealed little of himself beyond name, rank and serial number.

We can, however, surmise Jeter will be as prepared, disciplined and competitive in this endeavor as he was in producing near-metronomic excellence on the field for the Yankees. This is not an individual who can be expected to punch in at 9 a.m., punch out at 5 p.m. and let the chips fall where they may, banking on his magic name to be a substitute for all of the grunt work necessary to build and maintain a successful franchise.

There aren’t many to have crossed the divide from the field to the owners’ suite, and there are even fewer to have made the jump with notable success. Indeed, it could be that only Mario Lemieux, who has won two Stanley Cups as Penguins owner after having won two on the ice, qualifies in that regard.

Though Jeter lends marquee power and credibility to the ownership group that includes Michael Jordan — who coincidentally serves as a cautionary tale to those who presume greatness on the field equates to success in the front office — it is not as if the pending Hall of Fame shortstop is regarded in Miami as one of them, the way Lemieux was in Pittsburgh.

You know who would be? Alex Rodriguez, that’s who, but that is a whole different tale.

Jeter spent his entire career working for an organization that annually had one of the league’s top two or three payrolls and flexed its financial muscle to camouflage roster blemishes like an adolescent addicted to Clearasil. He won’t be living large like that while straddling his roles on the player and business side for one of the sport’s traditional sisters of the poor.

But Jeter lived through the downside of playing for a club whose feeder system had atrophied and had run dry. Surely he recognizes baseball is a ground-up business, more now than ever since the collapse four decades ago of the reserve system.

What does that mean for the future of the larger-than-life Giancarlo Stanton, who has three years at $77 million on his contract prior to an opt-out after 2020 and whose trade simultaneously would strike at the team’s immediate credibility while bringing back a mother lode of prospects?

We can be confident in suggesting Jeter’s circle of influence is wider than his circle of influencers. We don’t know to whom he will turn for advice or whom he will enlist to join him, though it might not be a stretch to suggest Jorge Posada and Gerald Williams could wind up in South Florida. We also can be confident in suggesting there will be no shortage of capable and successful people yearning to join Jeter in this endeavor.

There is no reason Jeter’s relationship with the Yankees and New York — arm’s length since his retirement following the 2014 season — should change. But what if Jeter, for instance, wants to hire and give a job of front office prominence to Gary Denbo, the current Yankees vice president of player development, with whom the shortstop was close throughout his pro career?

Question: Will this Yankees icon fire another one, manager Don Mattingly, as one of his first acts in office? Better question: Will he forbid facial hair and mandate short hair for Marlins players? The world wants to know.

When the sale is approved, Jeter will become the first African-American to run baseball and business operations for a major league team. This is a man of detail and of success who represents the embodiment of the American dream and who, so far as the public is aware, never has failed. The pinstriped clothes never made the man as much as the man made the pinstriped clothes.

Jeter has lived the dream and now he accomplishes what has long been a dream of his own — to become part of a major league baseball ownership group. But does that mean he will succeed?

Not necessarily, but we know that he will be prepared and pay attention to detail. He always has.

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