My wife and I watched a true crime story in which a nuisance abatement officer reopened a cold case homicide and ended up cracking the case. I remarked that he must have felt guilty and wanted to offer some value to his community after having been a nuisance abatement officer for so many years. This reminded me of a time when I was managing a drug store twenty years ago. I was held up at gun point and forced to open the store safe for three armed assailants. The robbers got over $3000 in cash and had threatened to kill me several times during the course of the robbery. I immediately called the police and waited for over a half hour for an officer to arrive. He took a cursory statement and prepared to leave when I insisted that he interview other patrons who might be able to give a better description since I had my back to them for most of the ordeal and a gun pointed to the back of my head. I also insisted that he have the area dusted for fingerprints to which the officer responded, Fingerprints only work when we have someone to compare them to. I practically screamed at him, They left just over half an hour ago and maybe youll get lucky and catch them. He finally relented and called in a fingerprint technician and interviewed a customer while we waited. Of course nothing came of this but when I called to follow up on it, I discovered that the officer had falsified the report and written that the robbers used a Tec 9 when I had told him explicitly that they had used a Tec 22 with a lexan banana clip that allowed me to see the rounds. I had gotten a good look at the gun but not their faces. It seems that the Tec 9 was on a list of guns that the head of the Policeofficers union (Dewey Stokes- who is still active in Ohio politics as far as I can tell) wanted banned, thus explaining the mistake. Two weeks later we put a banner on the side of the building advertising a special purchase on soft drinks. Within twenty minutes THREE patrol cars pulled into our lot and six officers escorting a nuisance abatement officer stormed into the store to cite us for having an illegal sign on display and issue us a fine. I was heartened to see that they could allocate proper police resources for such a severe infraction even though they could only spare one officer when I had a gun to my head.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 07:19:42 +0000