Back in my days of covering nothing but high school sports, I made friends with several school resource officers. They are all real cops that spend their eight hour days at high schools and middle schools policing the campus, and taking care of police type things that need to be done. All of them that I knew wore mirrored sunglasses. So did I. It was the right thing to do as a 19 year old sportscaster covering things such as girls soccer games at various high schools.
Ok, so it wasn't the 'right' thing to do, but being a male, I certainly did. So did my cop friends. However, NONE of them actually inappropriately touched any students like Concord Police Officer Jeff Efird is accused of doing. He works at the relatively new Jay M. Robinson high school in Concord.Damn near all of the Concord Police officers I've dealt with have been real nice. My favorite is Chief Merl Hamilton. He smokes a ton of cigars and is always easy to deal with, even on the stories where it's extremely negative for his department. When someone needed to go arrest one of his officers, he did it himself. I doubt many chiefs actually arrest people. I'd bet Chief Hamilton actually pulls people over for speeding everyday, too.
So, cops touching students in a bad way, and people shooting up high schools. I'm starting to wish my sister wasn't high school english teacher.
3 comments:
No worries. I'm safe... but thanks for worrying, big brother:)
I know this is commenting a little late, but I was googling the officer you mentioned in attempts to use him as an example in my criminal justice class. I happen to personally know Jeff, his wife, and his two beautiful children. Jeff was just that 'accused' If you personally knew Jeff, you would know for a FACT that those claims by that student...who I also know the extensive history on are completely false. You have no idea how much this false claim made by a troubled teen DESTROYED their lives. Jeff and his family are the epitome of good people, they don't even let "swear words" slip when they are angry like so many of us do. I have never been so angered in my life than when this happened to them. Do you know that a whole year and 6 months went by before anything happened in the justice system? Do you know they pressured Jeff into pleading guilty to the lesser charge of "assault on a female" which he only did because of the strain this whole situation has put on his family, and because they told him the jury simply wouldn't believe his side of the story despite all the evidence they had against the girl. Do you know Jeff's lawyer was flooded with letters and petitions from troubeled students that Jeff has went out of his way to help. Some of them even giving him the girl's myspace account which showed pictures of this underage girl drinking and smoking pot...her own cousin stating she was told that the girl was going to "destroy his life". You want to know what started this whole thing? He told her to get off her cell phone in the hallway and get to class, and she set out on a personal vendetta. I won't post all the details I know because nothing on the web is safe and she was a minor at the time, who knows I might get in trouble. I used to watch the news and assume people were automatically guilty of such things...Everyone is so quick to pin things on cops, cops can't be innocent if they're accused the public loves to assume their automatically guilty, we all remember the speeding ticket they might have given us. There is no more "innocent until proven guilty" in this country, especially when the media is involved, honestly, I'm not sure there ever was such a thing.
You'll notice in the post I didn't say he did anything. I said he was accused. I don't know Officer Efird, and haven't thought about this story since you commented. If he's indeed innocent, I hate he and his family had to go through all that. I also hate it took that long for the case to go to court. Thanks for reading, Courtney.
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