APD: Apathetic Police Department
May 10, 2007 at 2:44 pm by Andisheh Nouraee in NewsOn Wednesday morning, I called the Atlanta Police Department’s homicide office with a tip about a recent murder. The woman who picked up the phone didn’t write down my tip, nor did she offer to let me speak to a homicide investigator. Instead, she requested that I call back in 12 hours, when the investigator handling the case was scheduled to return to the office. Unbelievable.
My call to the APD was about the shooting on Beatie Avenue in Southwest Atlanta’s Capitol View neighborhood.
I used to live in the neighborhood and still have friends there, so when I saw the news report Wednesday morning, I posted it on the neighborhood’s Yahoo! bulletin board asking if anyone had any information about the victim.
One hour later I received an anonymous, private e-mail response by someone claiming to have committed the murder.
The person who confessed may well have been joking, but just to be safe I called the APD to tell them. Even anonymous e-mails can be tracked to their senders.
Unfortunately, the woman who picked up the phone didn’t seem to grasp that. I had to prod her before she finally connected me with an on-duty investigator.
May 10th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
I had a similar, uh, response, or lackthereof, when someone threatened me on a blog, and I took it seriously enough to report it. APD communications department to me: “What’s a blog?” After a long and lengthy expository process, I finally got put through to cyber crimes where I was asked one more time, “What’s a blog.” I think at that point I just hung up and went back to blogging.