ALBANY — Four days before he'll answer to city lawmakers about the dismantling of the Occupy Albany encampment, Police Chief Steven Krokoff on Monday offered his most detailed defense yet of officers' use of force in the face of what he described as withering verbal abuse from protesters intent on provoking a conflict they could later use to their advantage.

Krokoff called the demonstrators' actions a calculated move to boost their own profile by seizing the national spotlight that shined after other Occupy protests around the country ended in violent confrontations with police.

"It's not that they were just expressing anger, though I'm sure they were upset, but their intent was to provoke a police officer to do something stupid so, in this way, they could catapult themselves up to another arena," Krokoff said.

Krokoff's appearance before the Common Council at City Hall Thursday will come 17 months after the same council unanimously confirmed him as chief and standard-bearer for a new, more community-focused style of law enforcement.

Since then, he and his command staff have met extensively with neighborhood leaders in hopes of rebuilding trust on both sides of the relationship that many said went untended for too long.

But the Dec. 22 confrontation with the Occupiers — followed by the fatal shooting Thursday of a young armed parolee in the South End by a police officer — may test the limits of the goodwill that has marked the chief's tenure.

In Monday's interview, which was scheduled prior to the shooting of 19-year-old Nahcream Moore and the resulting flashes of community anger, Krokoff was adamant that the two vastly different incidents not be confused.

He spoke in detail only about the conflict with the protesters, but he acknowledged that the relationship between the community and the police is "always going to be fragile."

"These two things compounded on top of each other doesn't change who I am," Krokoff said. "I'm not looking for the benefit of the doubt. I'm looking for the time to investigate and get the truth out. That, I think, I've earned. I've always been truthful. The people of this city know that I've always been truthful with them. And the only thing I do expect is for them to give me the opportunity to conduct an investigation so that the truth can be known."

Yet an element of the occupiers' criticism of the chief has been that Krokoff's immediate vindication of the department's use of force the morning after their confrontation left them unable to trust him to investigate their allegations fairly.

Mark Mishler, an attorney for the protesters and one-time strong supporter of the chief, last week called his response on Dec. 23 "a profound disappointment to those of us ... who felt for the first time there was leadership of the Albany Police Department that cared about the community in a very deep way."

But Krokoff reiterated Monday that he saw no violation of departmental policies by the officer, Richard Gorleski, who used pepper spray on the demonstrators. He also forcefully rejected their contention that it was the police who incited the conflict that left five people, three of them officers, with minor injuries and four protesters in handcuffs.

"I didn't make the decision. They made the decision. When it comes to uses of force, we're reactors," Krokoff said.

More Information See More Collapse

Krokoff was summoned to address the council's caucus after some of its members — including a few of his staunchest supporters — sharply criticized the city's handling of the decision to dismantle the Academy Park camp, which ended with a hand-to-hand struggle between police and protesters for control of the camp's final tent, a carport.

Some council members have questioned the department's use of horses to disperse the crowd, as well as whether Gorleski's use of pepper spray while on horseback posed an even greater safety risk because the spray could have blown back into the horse's eyes.

Krokoff countered that the department's draft horses are docile animals trained around loud noises specifically for use in crowds. And when the officers' pepper-spray canisters function properly, he said, they — unlike fogging sprayers that emit a broad cloud, like those used against protesters in California — shoot in a direct stream that is unlikely to blow back in the direction of the horse.

The chief acknowledged, however, that video taken that night shows some mist coming from Gorleski's spray, suggesting it may have malfunctioned.

Two horses were sent in that evening, he said, to clear a path through the crowd for other officers who were charged with taking control of the final tent, which police brass feared would be dragged back out into the city's streets.

With protesters grabbing at the officer and the horse, Krokoff said, repeating a narrative the demonstrators have disputed, Gorleski had few choices.

"Had they been cooperative and heeded his orders to move back, then he never would have had to do it," Krokoff said. "I'm happy that Rich didn't go towards his (collapsible baton) and that he opted for the pepper spray. He had a duty and responsibility to protect himself, the other officers and the people around him."

Earlier that afternoon, after watching General Services workers dismantle the rest of their camp, the demonstrators rallied around their final tent and carried it into the streets in a spectacle that snarled late-afternoon traffic.

The protesters then returned to the park for what they would later insist was just a temporary stay to conduct their nightly general assembly — with no intention of keeping it there in violation of a court order.

But Krokoff disputed that claim, saying he does not believe they planned to hold a meeting but might have let them briefly remain there anyway had officers not heard rumblings that the demonstrators wanted to take the tent back into the streets,

"We were at a decision point there. Do we let them stay, which actually I was inclined to do, or do we grab the tent? And when we all of a sudden started hearing about running around the city with the tent again, my decision was take it away," he said. "Nobody was in control there. Someone had to take control of that situation, and it was going to be me."

Reach Jordan Carleo-Evangelist at 454-5445 or jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com. On Twitter: @JCEvangelist_TU.