Robert Ray Comstock, a fixture in the New Jersey press corps from the 1950s through the 1980s who served as Executive Editor of The Record for more than a decade, died Thursday. He was 93.
Comstock also had stints working as the press director for Gov. Brendan Byrne, as an associate professor at Rutgers University, and after leaving journalism, working in public relations.
Comstock died of complications from COVID-19.
Described by one former reporter as running The Record’s newsroom with “an iron fist and a velvet glove,” Comstock oversaw the newspaper in the pre-internet age when print was still king. His tenure at the helm of the paper covered everything from the Iran hostage crisis to President Ronald Reagan being shot to the Challenger space shuttle explosion and the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s.
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Six officers including one who provoked the ire of community activists for posting “Kill Em All” online about Black Lives Matters protesters were cleared in an internal investigation of allegations of excessive force in subduing a protester in June, according to Colorado Springs police.
Sgt. Keith Wrede, who under a fake name on Facebook, called in July for protesters to be killed, and Officer Robert Thymian were reprimanded for not turning on their body-worn camera as officers struggled to handcuff the protester, the Internal Affairs report stated.
Internal Affairs, which looks into complaints about officer misconduct, investigated the officers’ use of force during an arrest of a 29-year-old man on June 1, which was partially recorded by another protester and circulated on social media. The monthlong demonstrations in Colorado Springs were part of nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer who ke