{"id":496,"date":"2005-12-04T16:21:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-04T16:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2005\/12\/04\/496\/"},"modified":"2005-12-04T16:21:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-04T16:21:00","slug":"496","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=496","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a bit of a ruckus<\/span> at work this past week because of the Internet and the First Amendment. Yes, the power of free speech was at work (or, at work at work). Someone from the office decided to write a missive to one of the local issues forums (www.newarkspeaks.com) to complain about how messed up we are. If we were selling copying paper as on the NBC TV show (The Office<\/span>), it would simply be funny (as The Office usually is; I’m looking forward to the Christmas Party episode<\/span> this Tuesday). But given that we are the lead law enforcement agency in an urban county with a high murder rate and lots of narcotics and street gang violence, it can be rather alarming. <\/p>\n

You can check out this thread at the following LINK<\/a>. As you will see, our employee (Mr. “G2”) is trying to be fair to our boss, Prosecutor Paula Dow, who has been in the hot seat for about two years now. But he’s also trying to warn her that there’s still a lot she needs to set straight. It’s too bad that an honestly concerned and idealistic employee like Mr. G2 can’t just say what’s on his mind, right to her face<\/span>. But I can understand why he chose to post anonymously on a public Internet forum; if he did try to speak with the boss, he’d get in a lot of trouble with the layers of command between him and her. They’d make sure that he got the worst assignments, minimum pay raises, and no consideration for promotion. <\/p>\n

As to all the discussion that follows Mr. G’s comments, it goes downhill pretty fast. You see the usual “fight racism with racism” rhetoric, and a bunch of other garden-variety negativism<\/span>. It’s plenty easy to stroke your own ego by going on one of these sites and complaining about things; it’s much harder to make some positive suggestions on what to do, other than “overthrow the establishment”. Our current Prosecutor is trying to overcome many years of decline and decay in our Office and in the communities that we try to protect. The rabble think that she should get tossed because after two years, we still have a lot of murders and gang violence that goes unpunished. I say — and I think that Mr. G2 would agree — that Ms. Dow is to be commended for keeping things from getting any worse over the past two years. First you stop the bleeding. You don’t dismiss the doctor treating a shooting victim after a half-hour because the patient isn’t up and ready to go dancing yet. <\/p>\n

This week, the local yellow rag<\/span> (the Star-Ledger) will publish a big article talking about the same trends that Mr. G2 was discussing (he is obviously aware of the upcoming article, as are most of us in the office). Unfortunately, the Ledger too often plays to the cheap seats, i.e. to the same mentality that you see displayed on the newarkspeaks site. I respect the press and the First Amendment, but I’m not convinced that the press always lives up to the public interest that the Constitution allegedly invests in it. Being on the inside just a bit, I’ve seen too many stories distorted by reporters in order to grab the reader’s attention. The conservatives gripe about liberal bias in the press, but a semi-liberal like me can see the semi-conservative bias that truly underlies day-to-day news reporting: the capitalist bias, the need to make money. The Internet is also mostly about money<\/span> these days, but there are still places where truth can gain a foothold (e.g., blogs, hopefully including my own). <\/p>\n

I’d suggest that Mr. G2 start a blog!<\/span> Hopefully he will leave the URL on the newarkspeaks site, so that we can gain the benefit of his thoughts and observations without all the static.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: The article series in the Star Ledger on the sins of ECPO has been delayed until late January. Nonetheless, expect cheap shots and shocking headlines, followed by small-print rational explanations at the end, which hardly anyone reads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a bit of a ruckus at work this past week because of the Internet and the First Amendment. Yes, the power of free speech was at work (or, at work at work). Someone from the office decided to write a missive to one of the local issues forums (www.newarkspeaks.com) to complain about how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}