Let me start by saying that I full respect all police officers, whether they be local or state or what ever. But lately, I can't help but wonder if, at least locally, they're not stepping up to they full capabilities since there's budget issues. Or something else maybe??
This is why I'm starting to wonder... there have been two cases in the past month where a common civilian solved they're own case after reporting something to the police. One's kind of a major deal... a friend of mine sold his car for a decent penny, only to find out the cashiers check was bogus... AFTER his car was long gone. He was smart enough to have a copy of the guy's ID (with a wrong address, and possible name, of course) to show police and the police even commented how they had been after this guy for awhile, but haven't been able to track him down. But this was little comfort to my friend, as his entire future was put on hold since he, essentially, lost a huge chuck of change. But he wasn't content to take it for what is was. Long story short, he found his own car and got it back! And how did he do this? He Googled it! The police were no where near finding his vehicle.
Case number two, and this one, while not quite as major, actually hits home a little more. Our neighborhood has seen an increase in gang tags showing up on everything from transformer boxes to curbs. We have one neighbor who gets a little edgy about this, more than your typical city dweller that sees this all the time. Indy has a 'Gang Task Force' within their police department, so they have people that focus solely on stuff like this. At least you'd like to think this. So initially, pictures were taken and sent to them. Not sure what they did with those pictures, maybe just put a mark next to our neighborhood for the number of sightings. This wasn't good enough for our neighbor. He did a little research online himself about the specific tags he saw. Guess what? He found the guy's FACEBOOK PAGE, where he had pictures of his tags in the area and was bragging about them! So maybe they didn't catch him in the act of spraying the tags, but they damn well can tell who it is and now who to watch. Maybe they already knew the guy, but then why are new tags so easily showing up still??
Don't get me wrong... I know there's a lot out there for the police to do. But I find it odd that there are two cases, both so close to me, that were solved by the very people that reported them. And police wonder why so many take the law into their own hands... it gets done faster, it seems!
If someone can explain this to me, please do. Is there too much red tape? Is it truly a budget thing? Are they that overloaded? I mean, the technology being used to find his stuff is right there, at everyone's fingertips. There was no stakeout. No one was in harm's way in the process. Just a computer and some keywords to search. Done.
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