First we discovered that a convicted sex offender had been hiding a kidnapped girl in his backyard for 18 years until the police finally discovered the girl and the two daughters that the kidnapper had fathered. What is bothersome here is that the local law enforcement authorities, including the police, the sheriff, and the feds all knew about this guy. He was subject to frequent visits from parole officers and not once, not once, did any of them bother to check out the backyard. People reported seeing this guy with daughters that he was not supposed to have and yet no one bothered to check on that. The dude's next door neighbor even called the police a couple of years ago saying that there were kids living in the backyard, but the officer who responded to the call didn't search the backyard at all. He now claims that he needed a warrant to do the search, but don't you think he could have gotten one considering the man whose home he was searching was a registered sex offender? The cop also claimed that he didn't know the guy was a registered sex offender even though anybody, yes even you, could have found this out with a couple of mouse clicks here. Even more bizarre, a few months after the kidnapping the guy was caught growing marijuana and did time because it was a parole violation, but again nobody bothered to search the backyard even though he was caught growing weed.
The sheriff has issued an apology and claims "full responsibility" for what happened. What exactly does "full responsibility" mean though? He hasn't resigned, he hasn't fired any deputies, he hasn't taken a pay cut, he hasn't donated anything to the victims, he hasn't done anything except say that he was sorry. It is so easy to claim "full responsibility" when it does not mean anything. You have multiple lives who are ruined forever in part because of the incompetence of this guy and the people who he is responsible for, and yet he thinks, or perhaps hopes, that he can claim "full responsibility" and bring his involvement to closure. Quite honestly it should not work that way.
And then there is the case of a missing 5 year old boy here in my home town. The boy disappeared about two weeks ago from the back of a shoe store where his foster father left him while he went inside to visit the foster mother. The cops claim that they could not find any evidence that the boy was ever at the shoe store but found a text message from the father saying that he was so frustrated with the boy that he was going to live the kid at a train station. So what do these Barney Fife's do? Arrest both foster parents for murder and pressure them to rat on each other. Of course the DA has no evidence to support these arrests so both parents had to be set free, and now the cops have two angry and uncooperative parents on their hands who have hired an attorney who loves the TV news cameras and really loves high profile police misconduct lawsuits, not to mention a community that already distrusts the police and is still ticked off about the guy who got shot by a cop at a train station back on New Years. That's one hell of a risk to take when they have nothing to charge either of them with. Did they really think they would get that lucky? Now we may never know what happened to this boy.
Normally I would give the police the benefit of the doubt but neither of these incidents deserve that kind of leniency, and the cops are certainly not doing themselves any favors or inspiring any confidence among the citizenry that these folks are sworn to defend.
Now that my ranting is done I can briefly talk about a cop who always inspired confidence, T. J. Hooker. Variety says that T.J. is coming to the silver screen but it doesn't say whether or not the guy who played him, William Shatner, will be back in the saddle playing the part that allowed Shat to avoid being typecast as a starship captain with a dramatic flair.
Now see, this is what we need, more men in blue with a heart of gold and the ability to slide across a car hood without one hair out of place.
His mere look just exudes trust and confidence. You know if T.J. were on the case both kidnapped kids would have been found within an hour, or 52 minutes if you count the commercials.
2 comments:
Shat nothing, what about that dreamy Adrian Zmed? How much safer did we all feel with that guy on the beat?
Which reminds me, there used to be a Bill Shat billboard over the 101 Freeway. TJ would stare me down every morning with "IT'S A CRIME ........ more women aren't police officers"
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