It would appear that Mr Harrison has lived a charmed life.

I am all about your freedom of speech rights, but before you go and smear the names of our men and women in uniform how about you talk to them first.
My father is the Sgt. in charge of investigations at the ECSO and the number one reason cases are dropped is not “poor judgment on the part of the officers and their supervisors” but instead a lack of manpower.
I have no doubt that the ECSO investigations unit only has a 20% prosecution rate on crimes committed in the county, but one must also take into account that as of two years ago (I am unsure of the current statistic) Escambia county was the certified poorest county in the state of Florida. With this said, we have no money to hire extra deputies and therefore no way to follow up on the growing number of crimes in our county.

It is not Sheriff Morgan’s fault that there are so many cases that never make it to trial. Law enforcement is just like any business, if there is no money to make changes changes do no get made. Unfortunately, crime is not as economically unstable, if a shortage of funds appears one just robs, cheats, or murders for more.

I have seen my father truly depressed because he can not supply the manpower to work cases. Their are literally hundreds of crimes a day reported in our county that involve investigations and less than 20 or so officers to work them. The math clears shows that MOST will never be tried when the average turnaround on a case can be anywhere from a few months to years.

I am not saying that you are wrong about your assumptions, and I am not saying that you are not well within your rights to complain about our justice system. However, I implore you to consider your words regarding our law enforcement and in turn cast the blame where it is due. We have no money to increase our productivity with regards to solving crimes; until that is changed 20% turnaround is a fine number.

Justin Hall
Mississippi State University

http://www.escambiaclerk.com/xml/xml_search.asp?ulname=Harrison&ufname=Gary&ucasetype2=&ucase=&ucit=&ufromdate=&daterange=0&ucasetype=&uagencynbr=&uagencytype=

Have the names of the witness and the transcripts of their statements become a matter of public record? I would like to know the full story of what led to them becomming witnesses and their statements. I help pay the taxes that propel this judicial apparatus and would like to hear what was said.

I sat on a jury here in Escambia where the cops thought they knew where a suspect resided, printed out the identification of the driver’s licenses of the people living there, took it back to the witnesses at the scene to confirm it was them and then went and arrested them . . . . sounds innocent enough but what they did was fill the witness with an image they may or may not have seen before.

Of course they can later pick the guy out in a lineup because you’ve just shown them a picture . . . . double blind identification where the cops and the witness don’t know who to choose from is the only and best reliable way to pick someone out of a lineup. I’m glad someone had the courage not just to rubber stamp another identification if they weren’t sure.

David Huie Green summed it up extremely well.