Does anyone else seeing the sand running quickly to the lower level for this uber dufus?
I mean REALLY!
Elizabeth Smart spends TWO months TWO miles from her house in a mountain tent while Chief Fife leads Goober and Gomer on a witch hunt for Richard Ricci. Good GOD!
This guy couldn’t find his ass with both hands.
He and the Keystone Kops were so focussed on proving that Ricci was guilty (especially after he died and they knew there would be no trial) that they ignored the ONLY eyewitness account that identified by name the man who kidnapped the victim!
Not only that, but this “Emanuel” nut bag spent six days in jail in San Diego in February and Chief Dense, sorry, Dinse simply had not put out the lookout for him BECASUE THEY THOUGHT RICCI WAS THE GUY!
And, as I’m typing this, the asshole is giving a press conference. When asked if he wanted to officially clear the name of Richard Ricci and end the suffering of his family, this dipshit responded by saying, “Well, in answer to your editorial, yes, he is cleared.” It’s hell getting exposed as a moron, isn’t it chief?
Ricci was a criminal and I’m not defending him. Good riddance to bad rubish, I say. But this chief needs to go! Salt Lake City deserves a lot better than this idiot.
You work for the SLC police department and know each and every bit of evidence they had to work with? If not, I am sure they would appreciate your offer to come teach them how to do their job.
I don’t know if he is as bad as you say, but that was funnier than hell. ANY reference to Barney Fife is funny. In fact I think I called Diane that once.
But the cops do screw up a lot and Ill bet we have just begun to hear this story. In fact Drudge just had one of his Police Squad Lights as he is breaking a story about the Smart Case.
Actually, “LDS Fundamentalism” is in no way, shape, or form connected to the LDS Church and are a very small minority, mainly found in the extremely rural parts of Utah and are often the ones who are polygamists. (Hence the “fundamentalist” aspect.) They think the LDS Church has “departed from the word of God”, they have their own prophets and in some cases, their own scriptures.
So, uh, yeah, now back to your regularly scheduled police bashing.
Oh, and if it means anything to you sister, I spent 7 years as a prosecutor and in fact did teach Investigative Techniques at the Peace Officer Standards and Training center in Forsyth, Georgia.
And I don’t need to see what evidence they had. The victim was literally in her own back yard and they missed her. You must be a defense counsel.
I think the hardest part for the police to deal with is the younger sister ( Mary Katherine?) who suddenly remembers after 8.5 months that the intruder looked like the clean cut one day worker at her parents house back in Feb 2002.
While they should have followed that trail , I have to admit, if I were a cop and an 8 or 9 year old girl who has been traumitized by seeing her sister get abducted *suddenly * remembers months later, I would be hesitant. Only parents who know their children that well can make that judgement call and that is exactly what the Smart Family did.
The chief did do a whole lot of back peddling though during the news conference last night, but this was such a strange case, there is no text book example of how it should have been done.
The end result is that Elizabeth is back home. How amazingly miraculous is that?
But boy, the transformation in Brian David Mitchell from a normal looking joe to freeky curb side prophet is overwhelming. His eyes, however, look maniacal.
I had to know someone would come and give the SLC police AND the FBI a hard time, too bad it was you.
You said you were a prosecutor? Well, HELLO, you don’t know the specifics of the case you only seem to have what is generally known by the press so how can you possibily be critical of that which you are not intimately in posession of?
Take Jon Bonet Ramsey for a second. Similar situation and they still haven’t figured out who killed her. I don’t think it’s bad police work, especially when you consider the FBI got involved that in case as well.
The police and other investigating units can think of scenarios out their asses but that doesn’t guarantee a case will be solved. I have a friend who was murdered in 1985 and that case has never been solved. I don’t blame the police department (she was a 14 year old, strangled with her tube top) because I can’t. They didn’t have enough evidence to go off of.
Your “prosectuting” attorney side says you know exactly what they did wrong. My general public says, hey, they did the best that they could with the evidence they had. In addition, earlier tonight they said that children (Elizabeth’s sister) can sometimes remember things that didn’t happen or expect a longer amount of time remembering facts. Whatever the case was, I recall the news bringing this up in the first days of her abduction and I don’t think they failed at their job, volunteers included.
Because you happen to be on that side of the justice realm surely doesn’t mean you know all that the SLC police and the FBI did to try to find her. Your criticism is not really warranted since you weren’t part of the investigation.
Kind of reminds me of arm-chair quarterbacking on Super Bowl Sunday. Unless you are there, shut the fuck up. You weren’t so you don’t know what happened.
In addition to make this longer, it really bugs me when people claim to be some expert in these type of situations when in reality you are just blowing smoke out of your ass because you have nothing to do with the facts of this case. You weren’t there, you don’t know what the cops and the FBI found. Unless you had access to the evidence, keep your mouth shut. That kind of arm-chair quarterbacking in things like this really ticks me off.
Seriously, you apparently do need to see some evidence, because it seems you don’t have a clue what that “back yard” is like.
While it looks like to me that there were some missteps by the police in this case, I think this particular comment of yours is simply foolish.
Within a day or two of the girl going missing, there were hundreds of people, both volunteer and professional, going through those canyons behind and around the house. They had aircraft, dogs, etc. What more do you expect them to do? Within a few miles of the home are thousands of small valleys, canyons, hills, etc. that could hide a small army from a search party. And while those searches went on for a week or so (with large groups at least, and (IIRC) even after that with smaller parties of friends and family) a thousand people could search that area for a year and not cover it all.
Again, the few facts available (and they are precious few at this point, far to few to say definitely what happened) seem to indicate some poor choices on the part of the police. But this was a very unusual case. I think it’s little unfair to say the police (and don’t forget the FBI was involved) are complete idiots for thinking that the case would run a little more like most kidnappings do, and for being a little slow to move on what they saw as slightly wilder theories.
I think the whole Richard Ricci goose chase is cause enough for dismissal. Even after he was dead they wouldn’t let go. It is indicative of an unwillingness by police to admit they made a mistake. This kind of insecurity wastes time and costs lives, not to mention persecution of people for crimes they did not commit. There should be some consequences for shoddy police work.
I’m with Skid. They botched it. They deliberately chose not to circulate Emmanuel’s picture because they thought Ricci was the guy. And then he went and admitted the mistake ("Damn! Negligent again!)*. That will probably be admissible in a civil case.
They might have immunity though.
Oh, and the cops DEFINITELY botched the Ramsay case. You gotta know that, being from the Springs, techchick. That was clusterf*ck from the get go. One of the reasons they haven’t charged anyone is that they screwed up the crime scene so bad.
BTW, I do a little defense work from time to time.
techchick, a very brief aside - I’ve read quite a bit about the JBR case, and you don’t have to be a prosecutor, police officer, or anyone else with more than a smattering of familiarity with police procedure to see that the Boulder PD screwed that case up ENORMOUSLY from the word “Go”. Even as a kidnapping, they handled the case improperly from the time the first phone call was placed to the PD.
As far as the Smart case, I don’t know enough about it to have an opinion, although something that I think needs to be taken into consideration is that in any kind of search, a great deal depends on the searchers - how thorough they are, how observant they are, how they interpret their observations, etc.
First and foremost, I ain’t your sista, sister, or even the goddamn neighbor girl who comes to play and won’t go home. Got it snookums?
Secondly, I don’t give a shit what you did for 7 years. You don’t know what the police were working with, what they didn’t release to the public, nor the results of certain investigations. Obviously there were some mistakes made, but as I said, unless you have inside information or worked directly on the case, you come across as nothing more than an armchair blowhard wannabe detective.
So no, your background doesn’t mean a damn thing to me, brother.
Exactly Ugly! Unless of course his definition of “backyard” is miles of Utah mountain canyons filled with deep crevices, rocks, trees, and thick underbrush. But ya know, he was a prosecutor for 7 WHOLE YEARS, so why would he need to see something as irrelevant as :::gasp::: evidence!?!?
Actually, it was a lot less than 8.5 months. The little sister remembered way back in October.
Unless of course his definition of “backyard” is miles of Utah mountain canyons filled with deep crevices, rocks, trees, and thick underbrush. But ya know, he was a prosecutor for 7 WHOLE YEARS, so why would he need to see something as irrelevant as :::gasp::: evidence!?!?