I received this message last night from an anonymous reader in regards to the Sturgis shooting story that we've been following lately and I thought it would be interesting to share it with my readers to see what they thought about it...
"Sir, you should check your facts before printing things on your blog if you want legitimacy..(For those who don't know, Hector Castro is the reporter who wrote the article in The Seattle Post Intelligencer which alleged Ron Smith, the officer who is suspected of shooting a Hells Angels MC member in a Sturgis bar last week, had a history of sustained misconduct complaints that included taunting fans while working at a football game and of threatening to shoot a bar manager who tried to throw him out of a Tacoma Washington bar.
1) The victim in the Sturgis brutal beat down is NOT a LT
2) Get a copy of the discipline report for the victim of the beat down via public disclosure to learn he was never discplined for threating to shoot a bar manager.
3) Call Hector Castro and ask him why he is being sued for SLANDER for reporting the same erroneous info
4) Irregardless is not a word.
5) Make the correction before the LT sues you..."
I've forwarded this on to Mr. Castro to determine if it's a hoax, but I don't expect a reply. The paper and other news outlets that repeated the same allegations have not issued any retractions or corrections though.)
So, readers... what do you think you would do about this one?
2 comments:
Here are my thoughts from reading your post:
Discipline reports are available through public disclosure? Nice.
A written reprimand in a file must be considered as "not being disciplined" by the officers.
If Hector Castro is being sued for slander, it would be public record and I imagine you would know.
Irregardless really is not a word.
If the victim is "NOT a LT", then I wouldn't worry about making corrections "before the LT sues you." Plus, filing a law suit would have to be done in a person's real name, and there is no cloak of anonymity in court cases (except for extremely rare situations). People that send you anonymous threats aren't going to sue.
Susan,
Thanks for taking a look!
First, even if the disciplinary reports were public record, they are heavily redacted and supposedly have any information that would identify the officer in question blacked out. So, even if I could get one, it wouldn't confirm or refute the officer's identity.
I did a search for such a suit and came up empty, but some of the court sites weren't up yesterday.
It might not be a word, but it's not the worst mistake I've ever made.
As far as the Lt not being an Lt but the Lt still suing, yeah, I caught that contradiction too, pretty funny. Doing a search on Ron Smith's name brings up some mentions of him being a Lt on another area blog, so who knows.
I guess we'll see what happens, I'm not redacting or posting a correction until I see proof or a correction in the paper that made the allegation.
Thanks for the response, I appreciate it!
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