Jaycee Dugard’s stepfather watched from a distance eighteen years ago as the eleven year old girl was abducted and forced into a car while she waited for her school bus in Lake Tahoe. Though he saw this happen, the police were never able to track down the car or the abductor and, like Etan Patz and countless other children, Jaycee vanished. The story of her subsequent ordeal at the hands of a man previously convicted, then paroled for the same crime of kidnap and rape is a horrifying indictment of law and order in this country at every step of the way.
Policemen and firemen came to Phillip Garrido’s house many times over the years without ever inspecting the backyard compound where Jaycee and the two daughters she bore her rapist lived in open squalor. Neighbors reported seeing children at the home of the convicted sex offender but the sheriff never did even a cursory search inside or behind the house. A parole officer visited Garrido at home several times a month during this past year alone and found nothing unusual. Yet far from being incensed at the shocking performance of our law enforcement agencies, the headline in today’s Times article emphasizes that “California Officials Fear Abduction Case May Hurt Efforts on Parole.” Where is the outcry and demand for accountability that we witnessed a short while ago when Sergeant James Crowley of Cambridge insisted that Henry Louis Gates provide proof of his residence while checking on a burglary report. Had Sergeant Crowley been sent out to Phillip Garrido’s house instead of all the other lax officers of the law, Jaycee Dugard’s entire life would have turned out differently.
The incident with Henry Gates dominated the media and made its way to the White House where the president himself had the time and inclination to host the purported victim and his purported oppressor. The so-called crime of racial profiling resulted in cuffing Henry Gates and bringing him in to the station house where he was subsequently released; the professor was inconvenienced for several hours. The dereliction of duty that we have just witnessed in the Jaycee Dugard case resulted in an eighteen year ongoing tragedy for three victims and their family, one that has no immediate happy ending. Instead of grandstanding with a witch-hunt into the previous administration’s prisoner-of-war infractions, why doesn’t Eric Holder begin a massive investigation into the training and oversight that would allow for so many different enforcement agencies to so bungle routine inspections of criminal violations. Shouldn’t some of the people in charge of these officers be fired? Is it enough for the sheriff to say he’s sorry? Here’s the chance for President Obama to promote James Crowley to the job he should be doing - teaching the Contra Costa Sheriff’s office, the police department and the parole office what it means to be an effective officer of the law - someone who comes to a house determined to find out what’s happening inside, not just at the front door.
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