By now most everyone is aware of the Courier-Journal's article on how Officer's miss court. They constantly have an axe to grind with Police Officer's yet never have the ink to print any of the daily good things that we do. Not that the today's McNeswpaper resembles anything like it used to.
If you would believe the writer of the article, which I don't, all of Louisville's crime woes are the fault of Officer's missing court resulting in cases being dismissed. They try and lead the public to believe that there are thousands of bloodthirsty felons roaming the streets preying on the innocent because of us lazy Cops.
The CJ's ?evidence? is a string of lies and half truths. The facts that came out of this poor investigation that they ran to press with included many Officers from other departments, officers that had long since retired and a litany of other factors that would in fact have made it ?not newsworthy at all? had they been told.
The 'tabloid journalism" that the CJ thrives upon but thank goodness not all of their reporters follow showed a poor lack of understanding what the real issues were. In their rush to judgment and their rush to prove once again what a bunch of knuckle draggers Police are, they forgot to do a lot of their homework.
The Police administration readily admitted there was a problem. They took the time to look at it further which uncovered many inconstancies in the CJ's ?facts?. Alas, they have yet to go public with the true facts of the case that would clearly refute most of the tripe that was printed.
Instead the Department has opened a slew of open ended investigations that on their face are already invalid because Officers are not being told in their letters EXACTLY what court case they missed. That is a load of crap. If an Officer is accused of something he has a right to know EXACTLY what he has alleged to have done when he receives his ?48 hours? notice.
Officers have received a generic letter stating they have to give a statement regarding missing court in 2007. What the heck? We cite and arrest people every day and not only do we charge them with specific infractions and articulate the facts of the case, but we also have to tell the accused what they have been charged with.
The whole investigation smacks of knee jerk reaction in order to save face. The only part of this whole fiasco that has made any sense is that there are problems with several agencies and coordinating the efforts to get Officers and witnesses and suspects to court at the same time.
Some of the efforts that are taking place will hopefully address those issues. Others I feel have already gone awry and been twisted into something that should never have happened.
Is there a problem with some Officers missing court? Yes. Is it as rampant as the CJ made it out to be? Absolutely not!
I think it would be a safe statement that there is not a single Officer on any department from the Chief on down that has not missed a court case at one time or another. I will exclude our brand new Officers because they haven't had that many yet anyway.
There are myriad issues involved in this ?court problem? because the blame cannot be laid entirely on the Officer every time. There have been times when I did not receive process. I can recall one time being subpoenaed in a homicide case to testify and when I got there the prosecutor began going over the high points of my scene investigation when I told him that he has the wrong Detective. He assured me that I was there. HELOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I know when I work a case or not. He even pulled out a picture of me at the scene. It turns out that picture was of a different Detective. We were able to reach him by phone and get him in to testify for a trial that was underway.
What if that Detective hadn't been available? What if he had been out of town on vacation? I am sure the Defense Attorney would have made a motion to dismiss or even won his case based upon the availability of the Detective. As it was he had to find a sitter for his children, come in on an off day etc? If that part of the system had worked properly then he could have planned in advance.
The system needs to be fixed. If there are Officers that repeatedly miss court then they need to be disciplined. This ?casting a net? and hoping to catch a fish approach is one of the most ludicrous investigations I have seen since I first joined up.