Cleveland Police: Putting People Behind Bars First, Investigating Later?
"Cleveland police admitted arresting a man despite having absolutely no grounds…", a shred of a news bulletin reached me – and a shiver went down my spine (I've been thinking for a while now about going to the States to visit my cousins, who - fortunately - live quite far from Cleveland).
I wondered: is that the same Cleveland Police who doggedly ignored tip-offs form the public concerning three abducted women they’d been ‘looking for’ for a decade? The same police who released the two brothers of the kidnapper of the above-mentioned women (whom they never found) because, it seems, they didn’t live in the same room as their perverted mental brother – just in the same house, so they couldn’t have possibly known anything? “If I ever go to the states”, I decided on the spur of the news, “I’ll make sure Cleveland is not on my itinerary! (And if for some reason it is, I’ll refuse to have anything to do with the local police; unless they arrest me, that is.)”
I wondered: is that the same Cleveland Police who doggedly ignored tip-offs form the public concerning three abducted women they’d been ‘looking for’ for a decade? The same police who released the two brothers of the kidnapper of the above-mentioned women (whom they never found) because, it seems, they didn’t live in the same room as their perverted mental brother – just in the same house, so they couldn’t have possibly known anything? “If I ever go to the states”, I decided on the spur of the news, “I’ll make sure Cleveland is not on my itinerary! (And if for some reason it is, I’ll refuse to have anything to do with the local police; unless they arrest me, that is.)”
I simply don’t want to end up in a cell and be able to overhear things like this:
[21.00 Eastern Time, Cleveland Police Department.]
The sound of a ringing phone reaches my cell (no. 7), in which I've spent the last five days of my American dream holiday. I wake up. Someone answers the phone and I recognise the voice of the officer that interrupted my lunch at a local 'Big Fat Burger Joint' five days ago to arrest me, assuring me he would be able to tell me at some point what for
“… What do you mean, sir?... what did we do with the other man? We let him go, of course... He lived in the room next door and didn’t know anything about that drug wholesale business going on in the appartment - ... What? … the machine guns, ton of cocaine and two bodies in the shared kitchen? Well, he told us he felt it would have been improper to ask... of course we believed him - why shouldn't we?... Sir... let me stop you: that's all irrelevant now, we have a major investigation on our hands… sure I’ll tell you – I was just about to phone you actually: we arrested a man…. What do you mean ‘what for?’ – it was just an idea."
