They were busy solving the case themselves
Did you miss this collection of the best of Hell World 2022 from our great freelance contributors that I shared the other day?
Thanks so much for reading and sticking with me all year. As always anything you can do to support our work here or help spread the word is appreciated.
Cops in Indianapolis found a kidnapped baby that had been left behind in a parked car last week according to CNN and many other outlets who picked up the story. There's even a heartbreaking photo of one of the cops holding little Kason Thomass of Columbus, Ohio. A very happy ending to what could have been a tragedy indeed. And all thanks to the brave boys in blue.
"'It was time for us to decompress because we were disappointed that we could not find him,' Sgt. Shawn Anderson of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department told CNN affiliate WISH-TV. 'And then God opened up the heavens to us and almost took him and put him right in our hands.'"
Almost!
By God he means two women who were busy solving the case themselves after practically begging the cops to listen to them.
You'll need to read the archived version of the CNN story here to see how it was originally reported on December 23 without any mention of the two dogged amateur sleuths as compared to the updates inserted into the piece after additional more accurate reporting from the Indianapolis Star.
The entire Star piece is well worth reading here but in short two twin brothers were stolen from the back of their mothers idling car in Ohio last week. One of the brothers was found on Tuesday in a car in a nearby airport.
Shyann Delmar of Indianapolis had heard about the missing children and remembered an encounter she had had with a woman she bought toys from at a gas station. She told her cousin Mecka Curry that something seemed strange about the woman and that she thought she might be the kidnapper. The two then conspired to meet the woman again under the pretenses of another purchase. After driving around with her in the car for a while they finally managed to get the police on the phone to give a shit that they had who they believed was the suspected kidnapper with them.
Once the woman was finally arrested there was still the matter of the other missing boy.
The Star reported:
Aware that temperatures were about to plunge into subzero territory, the cousins knew they had to turn their attention to finding the baby. In the back seat they found their first clue: "Mae" had left behind a bus schedule.
Since the stolen Honda that Jackson is accused of driving also was missing, they decided to trace the bus route and look for vehicles covered in snow that would indicate the car hadn't moved in a while. At that point, a dangerous winter storm was on the brink of reaching Indianapolis and snow had started falling.
The first stop was 16th Street and then they drove to a shopping center in Speedway and checked out several cars there without success.
The women were about to give up, they said, and were getting hungry. They saw a Papa John's on Indiana Avenue and were thinking about getting food when they saw a Honda in a parking lot covered in snow.
Curry said she ran to the car and saw baby legs in the back seat and the baby’s face in the rear-view mirror, and her heart began racing, knowing this had to be the vehicle. The back car door was locked, and she feared the worst after hearing no sound. Delmar said she saw a couple officers inside a Blaze Pizza nearby and rushed to tell them about the baby.
"We've been alerted that the missing child may be located over here at the vehicle at 10th and Indiana," an officer is heard saying at about 6:40 p.m. in police radio communications.
Essentially what happened here is two women did the cops' job for them and then when it came time to speak to the press and take all the credit the cops completely omitted them from the entire ordeal. There's no mention of Delmar or Curry in any of these pieces that picked up the CNN reporting for example.
A nice little extra fuck you to the women is that that is Delmar standing in the background of the photo with the closeup of the baby. A photo taken by Curry.
I can't decide who I'm more pissed off at here. Either the cops for lying – which they are incapable of not doing every time they speak – or the credulous TV reporters who believed them – which they are incapable of not doing every time a cop speaks.
Don't make me tap the sign again:
Journalists are petrified of writing that anything happened without an official government account giving them permission because they think that provides them cover if it turns out to be a lie. But with cops it almost always is a lie. Police lie. Say that to yourself. Remember it. ...
This is why I always say the media consider themselves a deputized branch of the police. And for nothing but deference to power! They got nothing out of it and the rest of us in the public and in particular the ones being brutalized suffer for it.
One more kicker from the Star story:
"Indianapolis police have declined to share the details about how investigating officers found baby Kason Thomas..."
They still don't seem to want to give away any of the credit.
This certainly isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened. You may remember this story from Philadelphia from a couple years ago that went viral in cop and cop-kissing circles about a lost child who was "rescued" by cops.
Would you be surprised to hear that's not what happened at all? Instead a woman was pulled from her car and beaten by police. She then lost contact with her child in the widespread cop rioting all around her.
NBC News reported:
The Fraternal Order of Police, the country’s largest police union, posted a Facebook photo of Rickia Young’s then 2-year-old son in a police officer’s arms last October claiming the child had been lost and wandering around aimlessly. However, police had actually taken the boy after officers smashed out Young’s car windows with the child inside, dragged Young from the vehicle and beat her, according to Young’s attorneys. She hadn’t broken any laws.
“I will never forget what those officers did to us that night,” Young said at a recent news conference. “For them to portray me as this type of mom who wouldn’t know or care where her child was while chaos was happening all around is very hurtful. All to promote a political message of fear of Black people and civil protesters."
The mother was awarded $2 million from the city of Philadelphia for the violation but she's also suing for further damages.
In any case at least one of the local TV reporters whose work about the kidnapped babies CNN originally transcribed seems to have learned a lesson!
The officers still were there to find the baby, as evidenced by the photos. We are still working on learning more about how they found the baby.
— Brittany Bailey (@BrittBaileyTV) December 25, 2022
Once again: The cops are not there to help you.
I asked a while back if people had ever been helped by cops when they were robbed. The consensus was lol no. They’ll probably just show up and shoot your dog many people joked which is funny because it’s true but also not funny because it’s true. https://t.co/CnSqJLDalb pic.twitter.com/NsS79LwBS4
— luke (@lukeoneil47) December 18, 2022
I cannot honestly say out loud what I think Texas governor Greg Abbott and others like him who delight in this specific kind of cruelty on any day never mind on a freezing Christmas Eve deserve. Suffice it to say for now that I sincerely hope the after life they believe in actually exists.
The third and final bus of migrants of the night of migrants buses up to D.C. from Texas arriving, with Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network taking them to a church: pic.twitter.com/Y65B8RnilZ
— Christian Flores (@CFloresNews) December 25, 2022
We covered this kind of cheap migrant bussing cruelty in here back in September.
Owning the libs has long been one of the primary – if not the only – animating impulses of the right. If non-white people are sacrificed as pawns in the bargain then all the better.
“It was one of the most inhuman things I have ever seen,” a Cape Cod civil rights activist named Margaret Moseley who aided the Williams family and others when they were dropped in Massachusetts back in the sixties said later.
I had never heard of any of this had you? No matter how much you might consider yourself attuned to the history of the cruelty of this country there is always something else. Like a boat with a hole in it and no matter how hard you tried to bail it out you could never stop from sinking. ...
It's become a cliche to say that the cruelty is the point when it comes to the likes of DeSantis and Trump but I don't know if that's strong enough condemnation anymore. It implies that there was ever another choice they might have conceivably made. I'm reminded of the old quote about winning in football. Cruelty isn't everything it's the only thing.
How was your Christmas? Mine was fine and normal and nice. One of the highlights was seeing what ended up being at least twenty wild turkeys milling around in my in-laws' backyard. When something in the woods startled them they all hurled themselves into the sky as far as they could to land in the safety of the trees. I have never seen turkeys actually fly that high off the ground. I don't have a metaphor for it or anything I just thought it was invigorating.
Then I saw a cat slinking through the trees and I thought that dude was lucky he didn't actually ended up going toe to toe with one of these dumb sons of bitches.
Haven’t seen this many turkeys in one place since my last visit to Washington DC! pic.twitter.com/vZYAif20nU
— luke (@lukeoneil47) December 25, 2022
Yesterday when I was wallowing in a food coma and watching the Celtics (Go C's baby!!) I tossed up this quick collection of Christmas-related poems and stories by me and others.
Read it if you're still in the mood for Christmas stuff for some reason. I also shared this short piece of mine that will appear in my forthcoming collection A Creature Wanting Form available for pre-order now!
The bulk movement of air
We dragged the tree inside from the cold like it owed us money and set a bowl of water out for it so it could drink and pretend it was still alive for a little while longer pretend it had a future and then a few days passed and we still couldn’t find the goddamned box of lights in the wet basement so it stood there in the corner in its nakedness.
Looking up from your phone you said an acre of Christmas trees provides enough oxygen for eighteen people and they say that young trees grow very rapidly and have a higher rate of photosynthesis than older trees which is the opposite of what I would have thought. I thought being old was where it was at in the tree game.
You read to me that for a short while if it’s well fed with light and water the tree will continue to produce oxygen even after it’s cut down but before long the needles will dry and begin to fall off.
Later in the spring when I’m gone you might find some of them lingering in a strange corner of the house or under the flap of the rug and you will think how did this get in here and if you’ve remembered to buy a broom by then you’ll sweep them back out into the out there out where the wind is going to be.
I also liked this piece I saw shared the other day by Jeremy Radin.
Jeremy Radin, holy shit pic.twitter.com/JJ6NcFZd5p
— Ben the Aquarium 🐋🏡 (@neonpajamas) December 24, 2022
That's all for today. Goodbye.