In custody death investigation

Maybe the Free lance star should have written the article with a little more compassion Norman was not all bad in matter of fact he had a very giant heart just some ruff times…

Out of curiosity, and with no offense intended to Ms. Bledsoe, but how does The Free Lance-Star intend to maintain journalistic independence while having an employee of the Fredericksburg Police Department post stories about crime in Fredericksburg?

Doesn’t her employment by the police department pose a conflict of interest about the content that she is writing to the paper?

Is she writing and posting these stories while she is being paid by the city of Fredericksburg? This is a relevant question for the taxpayers of the city.

Hypothetically, if a member of the Fredericksburg Police Department or any employee hired by the city is charged with a crime, how can Ms. Bledsoe post anything about their arrest or administrative status without violating that employee’s personnel privacy rights?

As in this case, how can she write objectively about this when the city could possibly face a civil lawsuit regarding the arrestee’s death?

Hi Ben,

Good questions. In fact, we asked them among ourselves before launching this blog.

Crime reports are a popular feature on fredericksburg.com. Natatia Bledsoe builds those crime reports for Fredericksburg, so we gave her a direct way to post them here – as she already does on the police department Web site.

She’ll also post such items as public safety notes and other notes she believes are important.

The blog is clearly identified as that of Natatia Bledsoe, public information officer for the Fredericksburg Police Department.

We’re not labeling it as fredericksburg.com- or Free Lance-Star-produced content.

We are not alone in doing this. The Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper Web site, for instance, also offers local police a blog. (http://blogs.ajc.com/view-from-cop/)

We do not pay Natatia Bledsoe, and the Fredericksburg Police Department gets no favors in exchange for this blog.

Further, we will continue to work independently regardless of anything related to this blog – for instance, when we have a story that further develops an initial report from police, we promote that over the prelimary report.

If there are facts that do not put police in a positive light, we will – as always – publish those regardless of this blog.

This relationship in no way would or ever will keep us from reporting independently on or investigating any local law enforcement agency. And it won’t affect how our reporters cover the news.

I’m sorry we didn’t address this here earlier with the launch of the blog.

Sincerely,
-Brian Baer, fredericksburg.com

I love the irony.

Rarely does a story about a significant crime get published by the FLS when some armchair media critic or half-baked conspiracy theorist berates the FLS for failing to obtain some meaningful detail or uncover the conspiracy. Now the FLS provides the public with a direct link to a primary source of information, and that too becomes an object of their criticism.

Those with at least an ounce of functioning gray matter between their ears who seek an objective perspective, know that one ought not rely upon any single source of information. Every source is subjective to some degree; the FLS has their spin and the Police Department has theirs. This blog speaks to the willingness of the FLS to be more objective and the Police Department to be more transparent. I say well done to both.

As for you assertions Benny, it isn’t the job of the FLS to make the Police Department spokesperson accessible to the public. That is the function of the Police Department, and it seems Ms. Bledsoe is about as directly accessible to the public as anyone can be. You can call her office, go in person, write a letter, text her through a tip line, email her through the Police Department website, or send her a message on the Police Department Facebook page. I’m actually surprised she doesn’t receive smoke signals.

If you dust off the old reading comprehension skills, you’ll see that Ms. Bledsoe was not “responding” to anything. She was providing some greater detail about the event than was provided in the original article. You know, the kind detail folks like you say has been lacking in FLS coverage. She then provided more detail about the purpose of her blog. She was not responding to the event involving the death of the gentleman on Palmer St.

If your expectation is that she will somehow engage members of the public in an online debate about an incident under investigation, you know even less about the function of a public information officer than the function of the media, criminal investigations, what happened on Palmer St, or any of the other topics sullied by your uninformed opinion and baseless speculation.

Perhaps the Police Department did not opt to have the daily crime log open to public commentary because when it comes to investigating crimes, they really don’t need your advice. After all, they don’t come to your job and tell you how to make the fries. In other words, the function of the crime log is to inform you of incidents that occurred, not for you to inform the police of your opinion of those events.

Nevertheless, the FLS has kindly afforded citizens the opportunity to express their opinions through online comments and letters to the Editor. It seems the Police Department also welcomes input from citizens through various avenues advertised on their website. So climb down from the grassy knoll, take off the tinfoil hat, and try to contribute something thoughtful to the conversation.

Benny, the problem with backpedaling is that you tend to trip over what you’ve already said.

On one hand you claim by removing the comments feature ” removes the only way to make any kind of personal contact to Ms. Bledsoe related to her police logs”, Yet at the same time you say it is not about accessibility.

Do some homework and you will find most local papers have some version of a “police blotter” which summarizes daily criminal events. Even the term “police blotter” comes from the days when a reporter would actually go to the police station and read the daily entries made in the station log book. The reporter would glean items of interest from the log and follow-up on serious crimes. That is precisely what happens today, it is just done electronically.

As you can see from the daily crime logs, the FLS does not publish every item. They publish items they will be of interest to their general readership. So a minor theft from a parked vehicle may not be of interest to their general readership, but it may surely be of interest to someone who lives on the street where it happened. Thus the value of the FLS posting the entire crime log for their readers. In effect, the FLS is placing the police blotter directly in the hands of their readers. How’s that for customer service?

Reporters also use the crime log as a starting point to follow a story. If you are under the impression that the FLS has an army of reporters in the field looking for crimes stories, you are quite mistaken. Like any other media outlet, the FLS almost always first learns about a crime because the police told them about it, not because they found out about it first and then asked the police. It is sort of like the local weather report. The FLS doesn’t have a team of meteorologists and weather satellites, they get the weather report from NOAA.

As we quite often see, a reporter or an editor may summarize an event and omit details they believe are not critical to the story. This blog gives the Police Department the opportunity to share more detail about the event. For example, the fact that the officer in the Palmer St. incident did not deploy a tazer, baton or pepper spray. Had this blog not existed, that question would be lingering in the mind of the readers.

Or take today’s blog for example. The police thought they had arrested the right guy at first, but then learned they had not. No cover-up, no conspiracy, just the facts. Had this blog not existed and if the Police Department were not interested in transparency, the public may have never known about that.

If the Police Department were interested in cover-ups and conspiracies, the last thing they would do is create a venue that provides people with more information. If the FLS were not interested in providing their readers with the broadest possible perspective, they would not publish op-eds, encourage letters to the Editor, or invite Ms. Bledsoe to contribute her blog.

As for why the other local agencies do not have a blog, that is a very good question. I can only speculate, but the Fredericksburg PD seems to be a leader in innovative policing. It is the only nationally accredited law enforcement agency in the region, it was the first agency in the country to implement AutoChalk, it was the first to implement technology like tip texting, online reporting and e-ticketing. It was the first agency in the region to establish neighborhood community policing, it was the first local agency on Facebook, it is the only agency that offers regular classes for nightclub staff and merchants, it is one of the few to establish a citizen’s police academy, and the list goes on. Now it is the first to establish a blog with the FLS.

I’m not sure just what axe it is you have to grind, but it is clear you’ll get no edge grinding it on this topic. Perhaps you might create more sparks by criticizing local agencies for the services they are not providing, as opposed to the services they are providing.

Can anyone tell us why the rescue suad was not called in as soon as the man was suspected to be on some form of drug?
Maybe someone does not want anyone to concentrate on that. In today’s new, 1/4/11, a Stafford county deputy arrived on scene to a situation of the same caliber and the first thing he did was call a rescue squad.
And there is no need for a blotter or ill comments being made to see that that officer does the right thing first, and that saved a life. After they took him to the hospital and made sure he was ok they found drugs on him and then formally charged him. But it was done after his health was deemed safe.

This is Roscoe P. Coltrain, he he he Cletus. I”m coming…