Probably not much - although why an entire family should suffer for the actions of one member has always been baffling to me. I’m sure they’re investigating his wife as well, but his kids are almost certainly blameless and will need to be taken care of.
Fox Lake authorities today said that because the officer was never convicted of a crime his family will probably continue to receive his pension.
Several parties who donated money to the family now want their money back. I have no idea how that will play out.
Not really. Well, sad, but not bewildering - he was going down and would probably have been publicly shamed, his family financially devastated, and so on. This way he’s never actually convicted, never has to face the consequences of his actions, and his family is still financially taken care of.
The coroner at today’s TV news conference stated that no, he didn’t die immediately but probably lived for at least several minutes. It would have been long enough that he could have tossed the gun aside before dying.
If he could divert the investigation to “homicide” instead of “suicide” his reputation is intact and his family secure.
Stole money from the Boy Scouts to access porn online. Who pays for online porn? Stole THOUSANDS of dollars from a lousy little Explorer post over a period of several years, but nobody noticed? This case still stinks and others are involved.
So I guess we can now inform police departments around the U.S. (heck, maybe around the world) that they need to read any threads about a crime on the SDMB while they are investigating it, since we can pick up weird vibes better than they can.
Of course how (& why) the guy died has no bearing on what his family needs or doesn’t need. But what that family needs is not the only determinant of whether random strangers should shell out for them. The major driver in this case was the idea that this guy died in the line of duty, giving his life to defend the public, so the public should reciprocate by making sure his family doesn’t suffer financially as a result. If it turns out the guy was just another crook who died to cover his crimes, then the public doesn’t owe his family anything, and they can do whatever the families of gang-shootout victims do.
What’s this “we” all of a sudden?
As others have noted, the OP picked up on this vibe and the collective response to the SDMB was to attack him and his vibe. Now that he turns out to to have been right, it’s “we can pick up …”.
My purpose in this post is not to call anyone out or say “I told you so!”
I just want to clear one thing up. My “vibe” was not some woo feeling I had in my bones. I didn’t go to a psychic or get my Tarot cards read. It was based on logic and rational thought. There was too much that made no sense. A 20 veteran of the police force radios in the vaguest of description of three suspects (of what?) and decides to go chasing off after them into a wooded area. Why? No idea. They were at an abandoned cement plant. Maybe they were thinking of stealing some cinder blocks.
Then in six minutes the suspects were gone, leaving behind no scent, no signs of a struggle, no hair, blood, or scraps of fabric. And, in a marshy area, no footprints. They must have had a good plan in place. “Look, dude, we’re going to ambush this cop at 7:56, kill him, and hover to the highway. Meet us at 8:00 on the side of the road and take us to Chicago or Milwaukee or the oil patch in North Dakota. We’ll disguise ourselves as car seats. Don’t worry, nobody will report us as missing. We’re all orphans who grew up on the streets of Roswell, New Mexico.”
It never made sense, and any decent detective surely had to know this within days. Even if required to follow all possible scenarios, suicide should have been the obvious likelihood very quickly.
Gliniewicz, in text messages, complained about the Village Administrator (a local office) who was investigating him. He talked about trying to catch her drinking, maybe planting stuff on her, or possibly even putting her in the local bog:
Gliniewicz may be dead, but I think they ought to search that bog, none the less. And I hope they nail whoever he was texting with.
Man, this is getting uglier and uglier. This morning’s paper said he had been suspended for the sexual harassment charge. Funny that that never made it into the “heroic” coverage. Apparently this guy was under investigation, and had threatened officials. Would it not have been appropriate for officials to suggest that his reputation was not entirely unblemished - just to tone down some of the postmortem praise?
This a.m.'s paper also suggested the 3 “suspicious individuals” may have existed - and he may have seized upon them as a pretext - essentially at the risk of framing them. If you recall, investigators found 3 people from videos, but ruled them out quickly.
Founded by the mysterious Cecil Adams, who only gives input by email and PM, a small team of Admins and Mods pick up weird vibes with their crack team of Posters.
Ample opportunity for guest star shots.
First episode: search for the 1920’s style death ray.
It wasn’t about the life insurance; there are additional benefits paid to first responders who die in the line of duty.
Assuming he did steal what he’s now being accused of, he knew it. His choices were:
[ul]
[li]Take his lumps: get convicted, lose his job, end up in jail. Further, if the Explorer post was related to his official duties, probably also lose pension.[/li][li]Commit suicide, family keeps insurance & pension benefits.[/li][li]Stage a LoD death*: Family gets insurance & pension + $3-400m additional.[/li][/ul]
He was skilled at staging crime scenes as that was one of his duties.
First episode of the second season of Messageboard Impossible:
Criminals have now figured out that the members of the SDMB can spot the inconsistencies in the scenarios they create to hide their crimes. The episode begins with two criminals talking:
“Yeah, your plan sounds great to me. And I’m sure that the cops will never figure out what happened. But what about those guys on the SDMB? They’ll know. They always do.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Um, let me see. . .” [Quickly checking the number on the screen on his laptop.] “There’s 174,791 of them.”
“Have them all taken care of.”
“All of them?”
“Hey, we know lots of hit men in other gangs, right? Spread the jobs out among as many different gangs as necessary.”
“All right. What order do I assign the hits?”
“Work through all the members of the SDMB alphabetically.”
Because alleging an officer that appeared to die heroically in the line of duty actually killed himself to escape justice for a lifetime of criminality is not the kind of accusation you just jump to. I expect because of the extreme community sensitivity of the apparent circumstances, you have to move carefully and make sure your investigation is painstaking and your evidence is damn solid. The backlash against an inadequately supported allegation would be horrible.
Speaking truth to power is hard, and needs to be done carefully. Dying heroically brings a kind of power, the power of martyrdom.
That’s precisely what I would have written you to say.
Well, shit.
Anyway, I think it’s a shame that this will ultimately be a story about one bad apple (who possibly took his family down with him). But I don’t think I blame investigative agencies for taking their time and being very careful before coming out with this information. There’s generally little or no damage done by giving someone credit for being a better person than they are/were. But it’s really hard to undo besmirching someone’s name. And in these particular circumstances, with an ongoing investigation, caution just makes sense to me.
Man, this is getting crazier and crazier. Numerous disciplinary actions against this cop and violation of procedure. Investigation of the son. And seems increasingly likely he DID intend to frame innocent people for his suicide. If you wrote this shit as fiction, no one would believe it!
I understand the hesitation to immediately criticize a recently deceased officer, but it really seems amazing that SOME water wasn’t tossed on the fires of hero-worship. Just makes things more embarrassing for everyone involved. No one comes out of this looking good.
