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Ad boys, ad boys, what’cha gonna do?

The eagerly-awaited season premiere of “Cops” — that is, eagerly awaited here in Beaumont, Texas — may just as easily been renamed “Ads.” You know, as in: “Ad boys, ad boys what’cha gonna do, what’cha gonna do when you bore us blue … ”

Spike TV’s long-running live police show, part-docudrama and part “reality” series, previewed last night with two of our local officers featured in what the Cops Website said was a 3-minute, 26-second, segment. Really? Because it seemed shorter than that. Maybe it was because the show was basically one long foot chase punctuated by TV commercial, after TV commercial, after TV commercial, etc., before the next short segment featured another department and its officers in some similar police situation.

I don’t know the officers who were on the segment last evening. At least, I don’t recall the officers. The fresh faces kind of all look the same to be truthful. I’m sure some folks said that about my fire academy classmates and me after we began riding those big red trucks. The only difference was that hair, at least some hair, was in vogue back in the day. The hairless dome look is popular these days, especially among the male police population. Not that I am complaining. I have the same look. The two policemen were engaging enough and didn’t smack the perp with a flashlight or Taze him once the “actor” was in custody.

Now I admit that I liked the opening scene for the Beaumont segment which starts with a shot of downtown from a view looking over the Neches River. The scene pans along the river and includes the 17-story Edison Plaza building, which if nothing else, will catch your eye when passing through town on Interstate 10.

The substance of the Beaumont Police segment was actually pretty tame all things considered. Actually, the city has enough mischief happening that might fill an hour-long program without the pesky commercials. Just in the last 24 hours, for instance, there were five people shot in three separate incidents. Luckily, at least according to media reports, none of the victims suffered “life-threatening” gunshot wounds. I have staked out way too many police scenes, and hardly does such a scene possess the minutes of action necessary for sustaining a docudrama such as Cops. For instance, the time when the police stopped me while walking to a local bar and then threatened to arrest me for walking on the wrong side of the road exhibited no real drama except for that which was going on inside my brain. I can sometimes lose my cool, I am told this stems from depression, and the results isn’t always pretty. Fortunately, I have always maintained my cool when faced with a situation that might result in that dreaded clanking of steel doors behind me.

I hope more scenes from our fair city are highlighted on Cops. It is nice to see familiar spots on TV even if they are populated by criminals. For my TV consumption, that is about the only way I would watch the show except perhaps adding sheer boredom as a reason. The problem with Cops is you’ve seen it all before. That is why it was finally dropped by Fox TV and now maintains a much lower presence beyond syndication. I mean, how many times can you watch some methed-up pendejo with his shirt off and his drawers showing?

And finally, commercials. I know a show must have commercials to survive. There is no doubt about this. But I would bet many, many viewers other than myself “go off” when six or seven ads are piggy-backed and the substance results in a top-heavy commercials-to-program ratio.

So I say good job to the Beaumont officers in the starring role on Cops. They didn’t embarrass out community nor themselves. And everyone made it home that day. Well, I don’t know about the fleet-footed perpetrator. But something tells me he didn’t spend a lot of time in the Jefferson County Correctional Facility.

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Who is this guy? Did he have help? Is this Syria?

What the WTF is up with this guy? I mean, other than the FBI saying he is deceased.

 

Navy Yard Shooting
Washington, DC

AARON ALEXIS – DECEASED

Subject Image Subject Image
Photograph taken in 2011

DESCRIPTION

Date(s) of Birth Used:
May 9, 1979

Place of Birth:

 Queens, New York

Height:

 6’1″

Weight:

 190 pounds

Hair:

 Black

Eyes:

 Brown

Sex:

 Male

Race:

 Black

Remarks:

 Alexis was last known to reside in Fort Worth, Texas.

DETAILS

Aaron Alexis, deceased, is believed to be responsible for the shootings at the Washington Navy Yard, in the Southeast area of Washington, DC, around 8:20 a.m. on September 16, 2013. The FBI is asking for the public’s assistance with any information regarding Alexis.

If you have any information concerning this individual, please contact the FBI’s Washington, DC Field Office at  202/278-2000  or  1-800-CALL-FBI .

Field Office: Washington D.C.

So far, the alleged shooter and 12 victims are dead from this tragedy. There is uncertainty whether this shooter was a lone gunman or whether someone else or others were involved.

Let the news media and LEOs figure this out. Don’t go with the same old “If dogs were outlawed, only outlaws would have dogs.” Instead of spouting platitudes, let us figure out ways to stop this senseless slaughter. This isn’t Syria folks!

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Stop it! Just stop it!

Yes, I know I have written about this before, perhaps more than once. But it really bugs the hell out of me! It has happened again today and, as is the case in many times, the subject of my consternation it is under tragic circumstances.

I speak of the long-time police and news media practice of giving the public a description of someone that could fit probably 40 percent of people on earth. I just use 40 percent as a figure thrown out there. I have no idea the number. This time the sketchy descriptions are for two “persons of interest” in a murder not too far from where I live in Beaumont, Texas.  By the way, “persons of interest?” Cop jargon expanded into three whole words. Here is what police say the “persons” looked like:

“They are both black males,” said the Beaumont Police Department press release. ” One is described as tall and thin with short dread-locks wearing white shorts.  The second is described as large and stocky with no other description.  They may have left the motel in a gold colored four-door vehicle.”

Cultural icon or robbery-homicide suspect?
Cultural icon or robbery-homicide suspect?

Police said a 27-year-old Monroe, La., woman was shot at a Knights Inn motel and later died at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital. The motel is off Interstate 10 near Walden Road and near the Petro truck stop center. The particular area is populated with a number of hotels and restaurants as well as the Tinseltown theater. It isn’t what I would call a high crime area. Sgt. Rob Flores, the Beaumont police spokesman, said robbery was an apparent motive which led to a disturbance in one of the rooms. A man in the room was also treated at St. Elizabeth for a gunshot to the neck and is in good condition, KFDM6 in Beaumont reported just a minute or two ago.

Channel 6 and at least two other local TV stations — 12News and Fox4 — ran with the skimpy description. Since the story was picked up on the Associated Press wire there is no telling how many papers, Websites and TV stations will run the story as well as the embarrassingly short description. That all depends on space, as Captain Kirk might say.

Let’s take a close look at the description;

  1. They are both black males.  Some 47 percent of Beaumont’s population is black. About 48 percent of the men in Beaumont are black. This is according to the U.S. Census, by the way.
  2. One is described as tall and thin with short dreadlocks wearing white shorts. I don’t have my hands on any statistics as to how many black men are tall and how many are thin. Likewise with those wearing short dreadlocks. It used to be the only people who wore dreadlocks were the Jamaican Rastafarians. Now people of all types, both black, white, men or women, sport them. As for white shorts? Get the hell out of here!
  3. The second is described as large and stocky with no other description. Poor guy. He has no other description. No wonder he (allegedly) turned to a life of crime.
  4. They may have left the motel in a gold colored four-door vehicle. Or they may have left in a blue pickup with two doors. Or perhaps they fled on horses.

Come on! I know this is no joking matter but, even though I may have engaged in incomplete descriptions I received from police in my cop reporting days, I still found it ridiculous. I mean, what are the chances that come tomorrow, the tall, thin guy will be sitting in the cafe reading the paper about this senseless homicide while still dressed in those white shorts?:

Beaumont police just released and KFDM6 reported, the name of the victim and where she was from. That is also pertinent information. The police and Channel 6 Website both pointed out that the slain woman’s autopsy will be performed tomorrow at 1 p.m. That is helpful information for the media, not that reporters and photographers will view the postmortem examination, but to give them a sense of time as to when preliminary results might become available. I give the police an “A” for that. But is it really news for media to report and for most people to consume?

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“Black Hawk Down” author shines again in local “who-done-it” manslaughter

 

Mark Bowden is one of the more interesting American non-fiction writers of recent years. The former Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer is probably most famous for “Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War.” The book, of course, was turned into a 2001 Ridley Scott film but it is more than just cliche to say the book was better than the movie. The movie was good and the book was great. A contributing editor at “Vanity Fair” magazine, his most recent work to catch my attention is set in my own back yard.

“The Body in 348” is a page-turner of a murder mystery even though it can be found on the May 2013 “Vanity Fair” Website. That, plus the fact that I already knew how the story ended. It is one of those stories that is full of “being all it’s not.” For one, the term “homicide” is a legal technicality. The real crimes, perhaps stupidity the one crime to which the killer could not be held, were more accurately manslaughter with perhaps a bit of obstruction hither and yon.

When I first heard that the death at the MCM Elegante hotel in September 2010 was being investigated as a homicide I found too many parts to the puzzle missing. That isn’t unusual here in Beaumont, Texas, where petroleum landman Greg Fleniken, was found dead near his hotel room door. For a quite some time now, this city of some 118,000 on the upper Texas coast, has not had the most inquisitive news media. This is especially true when it comes to crime stories. Local law enforcement has not had a reputation for an overabundance of cooperation in stories in which news people ask and cops answer. It has mostly been a go-along-to-get-along sort of arrangement between the press and police. That isn’t being hypercritical of the police. They are not expected to give away the keys to all the investigative secrets. The damning goes to timid editors, as well as TV news directors. Today’s story in the Beaumont Enterprise is well-written and what gave me the inspiration for this blog post.

But this homicide was even more sketchy than most that are reported on the market’s three TV stations, in its daily newspaper and two weeklies. The latter includes a tabloid that has been an organ for certain local trial lawyers and a tort-reform courthouse reporter planted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help “shame” what has long been called a “judicial hellhole” for civil defendants.

Fleniken was doing nothing more odious that watching Iron Man 2 on the television when he met a most violent death, the cause of which was a gunshot wound to the groin that caused massive interior wounds and bleeding. It would take assistance from a private investigator Bowden introduced in a previous VF article to help a local detective determine that it was indeed a gunshot wound and not an ultra-violent kick in the crotch as the Jefferson County Medical Examiner had originally theorized.

This story isn’t one built from those typical TV-type private eye and local cop-style relationships in which each is out for their own agenda. Both private investigator Ken Brennan and Beaumont Det. Scott Apple both seemingly were a fortunate team. And even though Bowden notes Jefferson County pathologist Dr. Tommy Brown as initially reluctant to accept the gunshot wound as cause of death over a swift kick, the story shows how death investigations are often an exercise in inches and that natural folds in the scrotum were as good a hiding place for an entrance wound as one might find.

Lance Mueller and two other Wisconsin electricians were in the room next door to Fleniken drinking beer after a long day doing work at a local refinery. Other than getting buzzed, Mueller’s biggest mistake was bring up a 9-mm handgun from his vehicle and as can sometimes happen a round went through the wall and into Fleniken’s interior via his scrotum. They all went out to the bar after that, hoping, not foolishly as it turned out, that the gunshot through the wall didn’t hit anything or anyone. The next morning, the men knew that something bad happened as police were investigating the death.

Mueller was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison. A story in today’s local daily said Fleniken’s wife is filing suit against the Elegante, its security firm, as well as Mueller and his coworkers.

So many fictional crime dramas and even the non-fictional ones have motives rooted in all manners of devious plots ranging from insanity to jealousy to greed. The so-called “misdemeanor murders,” crimes of stupidity are often overlooked as uninteresting with little to learn from the resolution of such tragedies. Leave it to a world-class writer like Mark Bowden who can take a borderline-accident and turn the story into a fascinating who-done-it with much that can be learned from something so senseless.

 

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This is not just another story about “Johnny Football”

 

Many sports news readers are probably sick, by now, of the off-field exploits of Texas A & M Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel, a.k.a. “Johnny Football.” Maybe not so much if you are a die-hard Texas Longhorns fan or supporter of other Southeast Conference schools.

Note: If you give even one little hoot about this story, this ESPN.com “Outside The Lines” story by Wright Thompson is a must read.

My first journalism job was writing sports for my hometown newspaper. I liked some sports although my closest rub with playing was as an equipment manager in junior varsity football — although I also helped during varsity games — and was varsity basketball manager. I lettered in basketball though I never played a quarter. Two of the four fingers and toes I have broken in my life came from pick-up games of basketball, so I know some of the danger of sports, although that would be later in life.

I knew less about writing sports stories in high school than I did about playing them. I did know how to read, fortunately, thus I borrowed my style for writing from the local sports writers of the day. This was some 40 years ago. I am sure I have a copy somewhere, but I am horrified to read it for fear it had to be awful. Then again a friend gave me a great compliment on an article from those days that made me think about writing and writing for others in general.

Arthur has been a friend of mine since grade school when we played cops and robbers — actually Bonnie and Clyde but pay no attention to the gender issue we were just kids. I saw Arthur at a class reunion several years ago. Arthur played most of the school’s sports but he was particularly good in baseball. He told me: “You know I have a story you wrote about me playing baseball.” I found that odd that he kept it. I told him it must have been terribly written. But he said it was good. Besides, the fact he kept the story around for 40 years must mean something.

My friend’s keepsake reminded me how journalists, such as I, have an impact on others that we seldom ponder.

Sports reporting has changed immeasurably. If I was advising a young journalist who eyed a sports-writing career, I would tell him or her to read the great sports writers — everyone from Red Smith to Dan Jenkins to Rick Reilly — and I would likewise tell the budding scribe to study police reporting. The latter suggestion seems cynical or an attempt at humor but it is my authentic advice.

Fortunately and unfortunately, sports writing has melded into more specialized  journalism, like, say, environmental and military reporting. I pick those two beats because they were my specialties at one time.

But I also wrote up a police blotter item – during my time as a crime reporter — about a young guy busted for evading arrest. The young dude was allegedly smoking pot when the cops rudely interruped a party he was attending. The perp happened to be a talented running back for the Division I school in my town. But he also had a history of legal troubles. He was suspended from the team and I couldn’t tell you what happened to him after that.

Even “game stories” have changed, some for the better, and others for the worse.

It is unfortunate that the omnipresent media — from 24/7 cable to Twitter — seem to focus on the bad in sports. It is the reason I advise budding sports writers to learn how to read a police blotter, learn about the criminal justice process while doing the regular investigating that is part of a job in journalism.

At the same time, we are fortunate that sports news of today educates the public on the more serious matters of sports: Performance-enhancing drugs, the long-term medical effects of sports such as concussions from football, even collective-bargaining agreements. All of these are wrapped up in your newspaper, Web page or on a TV-teleprompter.

The modern sports news consumer is tremendously informed about sports and all that surrounds it compared to the trite phrases I would write about games — the Ws and Ls — when stringing for my hometown weekly. It’s evolution. But it isn’t always pretty. That’s why I try to avoid seeing my sports articles from 40 years ago.