Shades of Butterfield

[XLFD]

On September 9, 2013 I was commenting at the beginning of a Ludington City Council meeting when I noticed Ludington Police Chief Mark Barnett glance down and have a sour look not unlike that look that George W Bush had had when he was first notified of the World Trade Center attacks while he was reading to children.  Barnett would excuse himself hurriedly and it wasn't until after the meeting that I found out what the problem was.  Michigan State Police (MSP) Trooper Paul Butterfield had been shot while conducting a traffic stop on Custer Road.  

It was a very sad event, and fortunately they caught the person who did the deed and brought him before justice.  He was given a long sentence which turned out to be a life sentence when he hung himself while incarcerated the following April. 

The community mourned the loss of the trooper by setting up a roadside shrine at the spot near where Paul Butterfield was found, giving him a grand funereal ceremony attended by many officials and officers of all types from across the state, and eventually part of M-116 was named in honor of him.  Yet despite all that and many more tributes to the assassinated trooper by his peers, the MSP didn't add extra safeguards to protect their troopers from similar future events and make it easier for them to catch the perpetrator.  

I pointed these out after doing FOIA requests to the MSP regarding the incident and their policies.  I found out that Butterfield never told dispatch the reason why he stopped Knysz's vehicle and that the MSP vehicle was like many other MSP vehicles and did not have a dash cam installed.  As noted here and in the  Butterfield legacy. 

Is there any good reason why these measures (having in-car camera for all MSP vehicles, and radioing in the reason for a traffic stop) should not be in place for future traffic stops? 

Let's look at another traffic stop made by a MSP trooper that happened on Friday, July 13, 2018, and a concerning action taken by the MSP on this incident eerily similar to what they did with the passenger in the 2013 incident, Eric's pregnant wife, Sarah Knysz.  

The basic story:  Police say a trooper pulled over a vehicle occupied by two men and a woman in Missaukee County’s Lake Township. Police say the driver, Douglas Robert Sawyer (above), a parole absconder, ran and fired at the trooper, who returned fire.  The trooper was wounded, however, Sawyer decided to kill himself.  The others stayed in the vehicle and were arrested.

Information released three days later was still incomplete:  the two others in the car (a man (who was the driver) and a woman) were released and are not being charged with anything.  The still unnamed trooper was hit several times, but released from the hospital after being taken there with non-life-threatening injuries.   Autopsy results say that Sawyer's lethal wound was self-inflicted. 

All of the various media reports have portions of these facts within them.  The items they're missing is that there is no indication of why the car was stopped and the absence of any mention of a dashcam video, which should have been processed that Friday afternoon by investigative authorities if it existed and was on.  

The dashcam should have been on during this traffic stop, dispatch records should have revealed a reason as to why the trooper initiated the stop.  None are part of the record officials are sharing. 

Two questions should be asked: 

Why aren't the MSP releasing the trooper's name or dashcam footage?  If things transpired the way they are said, he could only be heralded as a hero, so it makes one wonder as there is no compelling reason given for this anonymity.  If everything went as written, why not show the video?

Why were the two other occupants arrested?  If they were not charged with anything, stayed in the car without doing anything, and otherwise cooperative with the investigation, why arrest them?  They definitely need to be questioned, and there should be more than enough grounds to search the vehicle, but if that woman passenger just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, why was she arrested?  Guilt by association?

The same questions pertained back in 2013.  Sarah Knysz was a passenger, she had no direct part in killing Butterfield, effectively looking on in horror at the deed, and was effectively a hostage to a crazy gunman until they were both caught.  Wielding his gun, he told her to remove the battery from her cell phone, and because of that and because she didn't try to run away, encumbered by a baby, from the insane guy with the still-smoking gun, and for nothing else, she was given a six year sentence for being an accomplice after the fact.   Perhaps worse, she gave birth to her baby in prison and had to see it go into the foster system, possibly forever.

"He had a gun and he shot the trooper," she said at her trial, "and if he did that, what was he going to do to a witness that was going to tell on him and was going to turn him in? I just wanted to keep me and my baby safe.  I was just thinking about my baby." 

Sarah was eventually released from prison on September 15, 2015, serving less than two years in prison, and was off probation by the end of 2017.  

The answer to both questions concerning this latest shooting are probably related; consider that a wounded bear can sometimes lash out inordinately at otherwise unthreatening objects.  

[shinblind]

The part about the cams reminds me that there is going to be a primary election this August. Absentee ballots are already available.

Sheriff Kim Cole has a millage request to add an additional 4 more road patrol deputies.

Cole says the millage would raise an additional $400,000. $100K per new deputy.

The current cost, according to Cole's budget, of putting a deputy on the road is just shy of $150,000.

Kim, something is wacky here with the way you figure.  Looks like you are underestimating the cost by $1,600,000 over the 8 years that the millage is requested. Trying to slip one past the voters eh Kim?.

Come on, this is bullshit Cole and you know it.

The crime rate in Mason County has been declining as it has nationally decades. The county population has shown very little growth. Why  the sudden need now for additional deputies?

If you want to do something useful Kim how about, instead of lying to the taxpayers, you raise funds to get body cams on your deputies and dash cams in your patrol cars.

With you fund raising prowess (bullshit factor) you should be able to do this without further burdening the taxpayers.

As it is, the jail millage is up for renewal along with Oakview and funding  senior centers. 

That should be enough for anyone.