Police leave victims behind

Police in Gary Indiana are not very good at searching an accident scene for bodies. Or, is it that they just don’t care enough to do a thorough search? Or, did they even do a search?

Arthur and Samantha Smith went through the pain of loosing their son as the result of a, senseless and totally avoidable, automobile accident in the early morning hours of September 15, 2007.

According to the driver, Darius Moore, and a surviving passenger, DeAndre Anderson, there were four people in that vehicle when it left the road and landed in a ditch on its side. 911 tapes verify their stories that they repeatedly told police there were two others in the vehicle that could not be accounted for. Police say they searched the area for the two missing passengers and could not find them, so the police left the scene.

As if losing their son wasn’t tragic enough, Arthur Smith found the bodies of the two missing passengers himself, hours after the police had given up and left. The bodies of his son, Brandon Smith, and Brandon’s friend, Dominique Green, were found within 50 feet of the accident.

The police could not have possibly searched for these victims. If they say they did then they are admitting that they are sloppy at it and re-training is in order. How can you train someone to care enough to do a thorough search for victims at an accident scene? You have to already have the desire to. If these guys are not motivated enough to search for their fellow human beings who could be alive and depending on them for their survival then they have no business caring a police badge.

Did these sworn protectors decide that these victims were not worth the trouble to do a thorough search, for whatever reason? Did they not believe there were two missing passengers?

Did these two survive the initial accident only to bleed out praying someone would find then in time to help them? These are questions that can not be answered now, thanks to the police.

The medical examiner states that they died "instantaneously" of blunt force injuries that were "non-survivable." That statement, the way it is worded, is pure ‘cover your ass”. Of course he is going to say the injuries were “non-survivable”. But now there is a specter of doubt in the parents minds. No parent should ever have to spend the rest of their lives with that haunting doubt. There is also doubt in the minds of anyone who knows that it is not uncommon for the police to lie to cover their ass from liability suits.

A lot of time and money has been invested in training these police officers and when it came time to put that training into effect this is all the public gets? That money was wasted.

Gary officials asked the Lake County sheriff to conduct an independent investigation of the accident, and Gary police also are investigating. In addition, the Smiths have hired their own representative to conduct an independent autopsy on their son's body.

Guess which one of these groups will come up with the most trustworthy results?

Lawyers everywhere are slithering out of the woodwork at the smell of settlement money and notoriety in this case.

It is a damn shame that relations between police and community have degraded to the point that we cannot trust what the police will tell us. I hate being this cynical, but history has shown us that they will lie to protect themselves. And they always cover for each other, from the judges, to the lawyers, to the police chief, to the captains, on down to the guys in the squad cars and the very people they are sworn to protect, the public, ends up loosing.

In the end, these police officers will not get anything resembling punishment. They will all go on as if nothing ever happened. From this experience they will learn that they can get away with doing this again in the future when a similar situation arises. Why? Because they will stand together to cover for each other and there is no way a police force will fire multiple police officers when there are so few to replace them. This has become a sad fact of life.

Maybe one of the officers will feel some humanity to the family and the community and his conscience will force him to step up and identify the one or others who did not deem it necessary to actually look for the survivors. But this is too much to ask for. This also is a sad fact of life.

We do appreciate the fact that these brave individuals put their lives on the line for us everyday. Very few people (not nearly enough) step up to go onto our crime ridden streets for our protection. But when it comes time to help a family find their son after a tragic accident the very least these police officers can do is try.

Charges should be brought for the following:
1) leaving the scene of an accident without helping the survivors, any member of the general public would face charges for this;
2) leaving bodies laying around and doing nothing to care for them, again any member of the general public would face charges for this;
3) contributing to the deaths by not doing something to help, again any member of the general public would face charges for this;
4) dereliction of duty.

These officers are also responsible for the further erosion of public trust.