Some publicity, of the unfavorable kind, has come the way of Panama City Beach, Florida after the national media picked up the story of a gang rape witnessed by scores of people who did absolutely nothing to protect the victim or stop the assaults. This comes on the heels of national media coverage of the shooting of seven people at a Panama City Beach house party a couple of weeks earlier.
Thirteen years ago to the day, I made my own effort to bring these risks to the attention of a national audience, calling out the local authorities for their role in promoting this anything-goes atmosphere that leads to the inevitable harms epitomized by these recent events. I have little sympathy for the boosters: they've created their own monster.
Some things just don't change, even when such tragedies temporarily jump into the national consciousness.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
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3 comments:
When I was a pup my Dad told me that one boy can be an angel, two boys can be trouble but three boys are a disaster. Add more people in close quarters and trouble multiplies exponentially.
Gun Nut
Is there an extra-bad batch of K2 on the shelves this weekend? That trash is bad enough in any case, but there seems to be a real glut of ODs at the moment.
On a related topic - I'm sure you've seen the video going around showing two officers subduing two idiots fighting downtown this last weekend.
As much as you can comment, I'd love to hear your insight.
In between the idiotic chants of police brutality, I was struck by several things:
1. It didn't appear that anyone watching made any attempt to offer assistance to the officers. Most just stood and watched, egged the guys on, or filmed things with their phone.
2. I was shocked that LPD would respond with just two officers to a situation where you know going it, its a crowd scene. I really question why they didn't wait for backup. I think that had they started their work with 4 officers, instead of 2 - the outcome would have been much different. And what is the harm in letting these morons beat on each other for a couple of min until more officers arrive? This was a simple mutual combat Class 3 misdemeanor which turned into a Felony assault on an officer, an injured officer, a tased suspect, and potentially a riot situation.
I clearly don't know a thing about the other circumstances, the other calls for service, etc etc but I don't view this as LPD's finest hour.
And before I get totally roasted, I'm a former LEO and 100% behind our officers. Certainly, this could have gone much worse then it did, but I'm impressed that it didn't.
One great thing I noticed that most might miss is how reserved the backup responding officers were when they arrived. Sometimes your backup comes in so amped up that they escalate things even more. That didn't happen here and that should be commended.
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