Pollyanna Want a Cracker?

As in training a parrot to repeat the question you just asked it knowing damn well that one of my peeves is answering a question with a question, let alone the same question. It is good practice for me to keep my baggage separate from that of others and this case is no different.

Here's the question: Why did CMPD and/or the City of Charlotte change the CMPD web site last month over the weekend of August 1 to a less informative source than the one that had been in place? Seems to me the opposite of progress in this progressive nation. Can we handle the truth?

This is somewhat serious information to try to understand considering that up until that weekend I used the old site often to help me understand and make sense of all sorts of things that I witnessed as a productively employed tax paying citizen of this fine town. Under the right circumstances that information I used to be able to obtain may have helped me to make life changing decisions. Now that tool is gone.

For example, if in the middle of the night while sleeping with the windows open I was ripped out of a vivid dream by a barrage of gunfire roughly 1 mile to the north I could fire up the PC, go to the significant event and 911 log and piece together what was happening right down to who responded from law enforcement and what the status of the situation was.

Another example. Let's say I observed something mysterious happening in one of the tall buildings downtown with fire, police and perhaps even Fed response for hours one hot afternoon. No one around seemed to have the answers and most folks getting through their tough days did not even seem to take notice. With the old site I could once again use my brain and track backwards in time to figure out exactly what prompted the authorities to respond, right down to the caller and complaint.

Now when I hear the gunfire close by or I read about the standoff, murder, suicide off of Monroe or I see something peculiar happening with CMPD, CFD and some blacked out Crown Vics downtown I go to my trusted new CMPD web site and I get nothing to help me understand what I am seeing and feeling. Rumor is that even scanners are useless these days because the police have been ordered to go cell phone when the incident is coded serious enough to do so, that way no one hears anything at all. That order sounds like it may have come down all the way from Washington DC and is probably carried out in many other major cities across the US. Once again the truth has been taken away and is absent from the public frame of mind while every other avoidance measure that you could imagine fills the space gap of awareness.