Bettersten Wade’s search for her adult son ended when she discovered that an officer had run him over — and without telling her, authorities buried him in a pauper’s field.

  • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    What charges should they face?

    I only have the information in the article, but from that it seems like the investigator originally assigned to the case was lazy, incompetent, or perhaps biased against this family because of their history with the police. That last thing seems like it is (or should be) illegal but the first two aren't, and the investigator is retired so it's too late for him to be penalized by the department (although I suspect that they wouldn't have). Other than that, the behavior of the police appears to have been appropriate - any driver could have hit a man crossing a six-lane highway at night, it isn't the coroner's job to track down a dead person's next of kin, and the new investigator assigned to the case appears to have been diligent.

    IMO the behavior of the first investigator justifies an internal investigation and I would be quite cynical about the impartiality of that investigation, but I don't see strong evidence that a crime took place.

    • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hitting someone and not telling anyone IS NOT appropriate behavior, you fucking psycho.

      • HubertManne@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        satan! People need to stop insulting people due to their laziness in accessing both the article being disucssed and a persons comment in relation to it. Name calling should not be happening but especially so if someone has not read and understood the article. The person you responded to obviously did so he knows not only were people told it was reported and documented. This is the salient point from the article you did not read. It really was the original investigator not doing shit.

        "This account has been pieced together with interviews with his family and a coroner’s investigator, along with court records and documents provided in response to public records requests: a crash report, incident reports and coroner’s office records. Bettersten also shared personal notes, emails, Dexter’s death certificate, a coroner’s report and case information cards provided to her by police. "

      • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Hitting a man crossing a six lane highway in the dark is not automatically vehicular homicide. Sometimes the pedestrian is at fault when a car hits a pedestrian, and this appears to be one of those times. It isn't literally impossible that the driver was drunk or going twice the speed limit and the cops covered it up, but assuming that something like that happened without any evidence is unreasonable even when the driver was a cop.