 | Bob Gabordi is executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com. He can be reached through this blog, at bgabordi@tallahassee.com or (850) 599-2177 |
A 10-year-old boy was waiting for a ride home after football practice at Gilchrist Elementary School sometime between 6:30 and 7 Monday night when a man in a large white pickup truck pulled up and asked him if he needed a ride.
His coach walked up and the vehicle drove off. Tallahassee police were notified and they reached the coach later that evening, about 8:30, according to Chief Dennis Jones.
The boy, who Jones said was not interviewed by Tallahassee police until the next day, said the man was a stranger. More details, such as they are, are in our story in today’s edition of the Tallahassee Democrat and on Tallahassee.com.
Yesterday afternoon, I e-mailed Chief Jones to ask what took so long and why police failed to notify the public immediately. In fact, no one was told – not even school officials – until late morning the next day.
Meanwhile, of course, e-mails and Internet messages were flying, some – again, of course – contained wrong information. Most were angry at not having more official information.
I don’t know much about police work, but I do respect the work officers do. This much, though, is more than abundantly clear – by this case and others day after day – is Tallahassee police don’t know much about how, when or why to provide public information. The only difference is this case jumped up and bit them.
If not for the persistence of the child’s grandmother in making sure there was some public notice, who knows when police would have told the public about an incident the public needed to know about right away if not sooner.
In my conversation with Chief Jones, he took responsibility for delaying the release of information. Police, he said, didn’t want to put out bad information. For all they knew, he said, this could have been – and still could be – an innocent misunderstanding.
The problem with that is that it could just as likely have been a deliberate attempt to abduct a child, too. Strangers with good intentions simply don’t drive up to little boys and offer a ride home and then drive off quickly when an adult walks up. That’s just not how thing work, at not from this parent and coach’s perspective.
But police didn’t know all that because they reacted to the incident much too slowly. If they interviewed the coach at 8:30 p.m. why did it take until the next day to reach the little boy and his parents?
And in the ensuing 15 hours or so after the incident another child could have been taken or harmed. Meanwhile, the driver of the vehicle, described as a white male with spiked hair, escaped public notice.
It is good to see the chief step up and take responsibility for the delay in reporting the incident, but the problem is it is not an isolated case. It is the culture and how the department behaves routinely.
While a policy that seems so intent on controlling information that it sometimes cuts it off was never wise, these days it simply destine for failure. E-mails become blog posts and Tweets that wind up on message board on Tallahassee.com with links to Facebook.
The only question is whether police what grandma to tell the public what it needs to know or if they want to do so themselves. Misinformation is the result of the absence of real information. An informed public is not a panicked public, but an alert public.
And to not even inform school officials – let alone parents – of the incident immediately is beyond inexcusable; it is simply irresponsible.
It is well passed time for city officials to take a close look at how police operate in informing the public and take corrective steps before something much worse results.
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