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Friday, September 04, 2009

Fire chief shot by angry cops... inside courtroom!

If you're traveling through Arkansas anytime soon, you might wanna detour around the little burg of Jericho. The town of 174 residents has a government run amok: Jericho has a budget crisis and its police officers are spending darn nearly all of their time writing out traffic citations. Some citizens are complaining that the cops are so obsessed with writing tickets that it's become almost impossible to get police help for more serious matters.

Now comes word that the fire chief of the town has been shot at by Jericho police officers when he got into an argument with them about their out-of-control ticketing practices. Don Payne had to go to court twice in one day, and it was during his second trip that the altercation took place and Payne took a bullet to the hip.

Oh yeah, this was in the middle of the courtroom.

And according to the story, the town's prosecutor doesn't plan to file felony charges against the officer. Payne however might face a misdemeanor charge for the fracas (what the...?!). No word at all on whether the cop who shot him will be punished in any way whatsoever.

(Anyone else thinking that the "internal investigation" will come back and say that this cop did nothing wrong?)

Meanwhile, Jericho's police force has been disbanded for the time being and a judge has voided all the outstanding traffic tickets until the town's mess gets straightened out.

Considering that so many towns across the country are now short on cash, I wonder how many more times we'll be hearing about stories like this...

2 comments:

The Happy Catholic said...

Cops are all in it together. Simple as that

Anonymous said...

Not so fast H.C.! Been in LE for a long long time and these guys are a disgrace.
THREE things should happen:

The officer who shot the chief should be charged with a felony. WHY on earth the prosecutor is refusing to charge a felony is completely beyond me.

The Jericho PD should be disbanded completely and the jurisdiction returned to the Sheriff's Office who originally patrolled it.

The JPD should be investigated federally to see just what happened to all that ticket revenue.

Disgusting display of completely inappropriate and unethical behavior. And needs to be dealt with properly.