Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 4028 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: JUNE 2016 Chief is on the hot seat after arrests There’s all kinds of courage, and admitting things got screwed up takes a lot of guts Murfreesboro, Tenn. Police Chief Karl Durr is interviewed in Nashville, Tenn. Durr has offered an apology after his officers handcuffed and arrested several elementary school students . (Samuel M. Simpkins/The Tennessean via AP) H ere’s the deal with negative stories about kids and cops – they’re all different. A lot of times people are outraged after seeing a head- line that reads, “Fourteen- year-old arrested violently by police.” But they might not know that the officer was a 5’6”, 125-pound school resource officer and the kid was six feet tall and 250 pounds and having some kind of mental health crisis. But there are times that it’s very difficult to understand why certain actions get taken when police officers deal with young children in their capacity as law enforcement professionals. In Murfreesboro, Tennes- see, the chief of police is apologizing after outraged parents demanded explana- tions for the arrests of five children between ages 6 and 10. The kids were arrested at school after some type of disturbance in their neigh- borhood. “I am so saddened, and I’m so sorry this incident happened,” Murfreesboro Police Chief Karl Durr told reporters and community members at a recent press conference. “Because I truly think it could have been avoided.” Here’s the stangest part. The children were accused of “failing to stop a fight that happened near their homes.” That didn’t go over well with the parents. “There are innocent kids that have been arrested that have been entered in a sys- tem they have no business in,” noted Zacchaeus Craw- ford, who added that three of his children were handcuffed in front of classmates at Hob- good Elementary School. Police initially said they got arrest warrants for the students after watching a video recording of the fight and determined the children “had not done enough” to break it up. Adding insult to injury, police failed to notify the par- ents of the extremely young kids in a timely manner, or so the parents say. Now Chief Durr is trying to win back the trust and support that this incident has cost him and his people. Apologizing personally to the parents might be a good start, but that hasn’t hap- pened yet. “There will come a time and a place where I can apologize to them,” Durr said. “But we’re also going to have to be transparent and accountable for what’s occurred, and I am going to have to take responsibility for any wrong that’s happened and acknowledge it and fix it and that means the changing of policies and practices.” One of the things Joe Six Pack rarely understands about incidents like the trag- ic shooting of Tamir Rice is the fact that cops respond with the information they have – not the information they don’t. Between the caller, the dispatcher and the response, there were plenty of op- portunities for things to go sideways. Maybe the caller says, “It looks like it might be a toy gun,” but the dispatcher fails to convey that information. In Cincinnati, a special prosecutor says a 911 caller won’t be charged for report- No charges for 911 caller in Walmart shooting The caller erroneously reported that there was an armed man at the location. Bad info puts cops in bad situations. ing a man waving a gun in an Ohio Wal-Mart before police fatally shot him. The decision by Mark Piepmeier was met with a mixed response. Piepmeier is the same prosecutor who presented the case to a grand jury. That jury determined that the August 2014 shooting of 22-year-old John Crawford III at the Beavercreek store, near Dayton, was justified. The 911 caller told investi- gators he thought Crawford had a real firearm, but it was actually an air rifle Crawford had picked up from the shelf. – Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis speaking to the media after a similar incident in Baltimore recently. Replica guns a growing concern “I would argue our police officers were compelled to act when they saw that 13-year- old with a gun in his hand.”