The following originally appeared at TomKnighton.com. Please head on over and read all about it.
People make mistakes, even really bad ones sometimes. Some of my own mistakes are the stuff of legend, or would be if I was sure the statute of limitations had expired, but the Albany Police Department’s mistakes make anything I’ve done pale in comparison. The most recent, as reported in The Albany Journal, involves police locking a “person of interest” in an interview room overnight. Apparently, they just forgot about them.
In and of itself, that’s pretty bad. But the City of Albany’s response? Cricket’s chirping, that’s what.
Al Lott, the Albany City Manager, has not responded to the Journal’s Georgia Open Records Act requests. That’s not unusual though. I can’t recall him responding to one in the last year and a half that I’ve been covering the comings and goings of the city. Chief John Proctor is mum as well. In fact, the only word that’s been received was word that there would be no word until ten days after an investigation has concluded.
Of course, that word came four days after the request, when three is the limit allowed by law.
Now, mistakes happen. Even huge ones. But this continues a pattern that has involved police officer misconduct for some time. Officers have run shoplifting rings, broken into auto parts stores for car parts they didn’t want to buy, stolen money from a motorcycle riding accident victim, and the most recent of an officer taking home records with personal information and then just tossing it in the trash.
Read more here.
