The folks in my surrounding area are getting a little too crazy... even for me. I think I liked it better when they were all just a bunch of boring, redneck hillbillies that just sat around drinking beer and renting DVDs for their weekend's entertainment. There was a time when our neighboring big city of Cincinnati was getting all the bad press and media attention for gang related murders and widespread police brutality toward innocent and elderly people. You know... The easier targets.
Now the small town area I live in is getting that kind of attention this year. Some of the news is even garnering national media attention.
Explanation
In the town of Rising Sun, Indiana, a couple rinky dink towns away from me, a boy by the name of Andrew Conley, 18 years old, decided to strangle his 10 year old brother to death because he wanted to be like the main character in the TV show, Dexter. Dexter is a serial killer in the show and apparently, Andrew was a big fan. The news of the murder made headlines across the U.S. and everyone expressed disbelief it had happened in such a small town.
At the time of the murder, Andrew was 17.
Andrew confessed to the murder, while in court, very calmly and gave intricate details to the judge and the courtroom audience of how it all went down.
Andrew explained that he choked his younger brother while they were playing around and wrestling on the ground until the boy passed out. He said he then dragged his brother into the kitchen, put on gloves and continued strangling him for at least 20 minutes. Andrew then confided that he put the boy's head into two plastic bags.
A coroner testified that Andrew's brother, Conner, may have still been alive for minutes or hours after that point, but the bags helped suffocate him and Conley repeatedly banged the boy's head on the ground before loading him in the trunk of his car to make sure he was dead.
Conley told psychologists he had been unable to stop and felt as if he were watching the murder outside himself. But the judge said that despite contradictory statements by Conley, experts agreed that he still knew what he was doing was wrong.
The judge discounted Conley's claims of remorse as "superficial and not sincere," saying he could have expressed remorse when he drove to give his girlfriend a promise ring with his brother's body in the trunk of his car but didn't.
The judge also noted that instead of telling his father what he had done the following morning, he asked for condoms and joked with his mother and watched football all day. Conley also calmly remarked that he had calmly stood over his sleeping father with a knife and considered cutting his throat.
Conley, now 18, was sentenced a month ago to life in prison without parole. The prosecutor said he couldn't get the death penalty because he was only 17 when the murder occurred.
A Couple of Florence Nightingales
Then we have two cases of two head nurses in two different nursing homes that were arrested for selling drugs; pain medication, to be exact, that was meant to be administered to two elderly women who were both suffering from terminal illnesses. One elderly lady was on morphine for her horrendous pain. The other, on a high dosage of Vicodin. Both of them died in agony due to the head nurses using the medication that was meant for them and instead, selling their medication for profit.
Who's Going To Protect Us From The Cops?
Then there is the disturbing trend, lately, where the cops in this area of small, strung together towns are getting in trouble for some pretty heinous crimes.
In the town I grew up in, a former Assistant Police Chief has been caught, arrested and fined for pilfering money from the police department he worked at. No jail time, however. He had been a cop there for close to twenty years.
Still another cop has been suspended, temporarily, from the force for two instances of Driving Under the Influence and crashing into someone on the last one.
Yet another cop, in my old hometown, has recently been arrested for beating his wife almost to death and he has been ticketed and given a little fine for his actions.
Even the mayor of the town I'm living in now has recently been arrested for driving under the influence and crashing into a parked vehicle.
Saving The Worst For Last
One former Assistant Police Chief was arrested earlier this year. This former Assistant Police Chief of one of these small towns in a Indiana police department will spend the next seven years in prison. The cop resigned in April of 2010 after being arrested for solicitation.
Police say the veteran police officer was chatting with whom he thought to be a 13 year old girl, who was, in fact, an undercover police officer in Ohio. The former Assistant Police Chief, while chatting away with the "young girl", also exposed his cock to her by way of using his son's computer and the son's web cam. It was later reported that he had flashed his genitals on several different occasions to other young girls, by way of web cam, after law enforcement officials confiscated the computer and checked out the history and video files on the hard drive and talking to victims of whom he flashed.
The court was thinking about fining "Officer Pervert" a shit load of money on top of his sentence but they decided, in the end, to refrain from doing so because his wife and two sons would be the ones to suffer. His wife, of nearly twenty years of marriage, is barely getting by as it is because she works at Wal-Mart. You know... Wal-Mart. That's the place where they treat their employees like shit and pay them next to nothing while they face and deal with the general public every day- a fate worse than death. I know. I was employed there for about three years.
Also, on a side note, if any employee at Wal-Mart is caught or rumored to have spoken about this woman's ex-cop husband (yes, she is still married to him) and the crime he committed, they have been told they will be immediately terminated on site.
By the way, I have nothing but absolute respect for anyone having to deal with an ungrateful, cold blooded team of management and your typical asshole customers every day. Much more so than anyone else in any other occupation- with the exception of firefighters, EMT's and people who help others out.
"Officer Pervert", who is 52 years old, had been a police officer for 25 years. As of now, this scumbag, piece-of-shit ex-cop remains held at the Switzerland County Detention Center until he can be moved to a state facility because they fear for his safety.
Hopefully, when they throw his sorry ass in prison, he will be eligible for the special Seven Year Plan of severe, sadistic anal raping as a lesson in justice.
Let's collectively cross our fingers, shall we?
The popular expression in our area, nowadays, is this:
If you wanna get a job as a cop with the police department- it's easy... Just commit a felony.
The Truth
All cops are not heroes and that's a fact, but because of the myth that "all cops are heroes," there's minimal call for disciplining bad cops, and maximal call for "forgiving," and "understanding" the tough work of being a cop. To me, that type of allowance is terrifying.
Police work is tough, of course. It's among the most difficult jobs in the world, work that deserves our respect. And turning a blind eye toward police misconduct by allowing crooked, corrupt, outright criminal cops to have long careers in law enforcement only makes it more difficult and dangerous for the good cops.
Letting cops get away with crime, or "punishing" police misconduct with long, leisurely paid suspensions, or probation, or sweet deals that allow a policeman's own police record to be expunged, or any of the other special treatments cops typically receive when they're accused of wrongdoing, is asinine and counterproductive.
And really, the same goes for any authority figure. They should be held accountable and the punishment for any wrongdoing on their part should be swift and harsh just because they have been given the responsibility of either leading and/or protecting people in their charge.
If you wish, I will gleefully volunteer for the job of doling out said punishments. I can be quite creative, I cheerfully assure you. I am smiling quite evilly now, as you can imagine. And can you just imagine me in charge of punishing such offenders? What fun everyone would have!
In The End
It's been an exciting year in my neck of the woods thus far. I wonder what will happen next in my sleepy little town. It's always been a source of mild amusement for me when reporters come around and do their usual commentary during these types of reports, saying the same routine phrase, "Well, you wouldn't think it could happen in such a small town like this but "so and so" committed _________ (fill in the blank for whatever shocking crime you can think of that could happen in a burg like mine).