August 28th, 2008
At least some of them are in jail; there could be more arrests by the time you read this. Mid-week, the Rockford police department announced they’d arrested three suspects in the northeast Rockford string of burglaries. On Thursday, there were two more.
Well done, guys in blue. I mean that. It does take time to piece the information together, to see the trend develop and make the connections. It takes smart planning and careful execution to do the stakeouts and catch the suspects in the act. For each cop who played a hand in this, I tip my hat.
It doesn’t, however, make me less annoyed that it took forever to get the information to the public. You captured the dudes less than two weeks after you sent out that vague press release and reverse-911 call (I got the call at my house, so I know it worked.) The first of the burglaries was in July, which made it six weeks or so before the public had any idea homes were being burglarized. I accept that the apparent random nature of the burglaries may have meant you didn’t see the pattern in July, but how about early August? If you want the public to help, to get involved, give us enough information that we can act on it smartly.
And, just so I lay it all out: I’m not all that thrilled with how the Register Star handled the press release in the beginning either. We didn’t ask enough questions in the first few days after that release and before our Freedom of Information Act filing. And, if I hadn’t been annoyed at the lack of information in the story we published, we might not have done our reporting. Once we got it clear what we needed to do, we did it and we got most of the information.
So, yeah, I’m annoyed at the police for making it so hard to tell readers what was happening. I’m not patting us on the back either because we didn’t kick it in gear as fast as we should have. Hopefully, we all learned some lessons.
August 28th, 2008
It’s a good day to be an Illinoisan. Oh, not because we are a blue state. Certainly not because our governor can govern. Not because we are smarter, wealthier, better employed. None of those things. And, not even because we had a thing to do with it. It’s good to be an Illinoisan today because when history books are written, we lived here in the land of Lincoln the day a black man was nominated for President of the United State — the first time a major political party has done so.
Barack Obama. Illinois junior senator, a man who just four years ago was little known outside a handful of editorial boards, some state politicians and his family and friends. Not for this post a discussion of politics, of platforms, of left versus right. This post because after four centuries of American history, a black man stands on the podium to accept his party’s nomination.
I grew up in the South. I remember signs on drinking fountains that said “whites only” and “colored.” I remember knowing there were separate doors for black patients and white patients at Dr. Baldwin’s office. I knew then that black women rode in the back seat, never the front, although I once told Miss Ida that it wasn’t right for a child (me) to sit up front. Grown-ups sit there, I said. Hush, she said; that’s not the way it’s done.
Not the way it’s done.
I’ve spent almost 20 years here in Rockford, and I lived here through the beginning, middle and end of the Rockford School District’s discrimination lawsuit and subsequent desegregation. Millions of dollars and countless political nightmares later, the mantra remained: That’s not the way it’s done.
Not the way it’s done. Our failure as people of all colors to reconcile 400 years of racial chaos may well be our country’s greatest challenge to the future. For all too often, that reconciliation is not the way it’s done.
But today? Today for just a moment, we see a glimpse of what that reconciliation might look like. Barack Obama, Illinois’ favorite son, was nominated to be President of the United States.
