Guilty, guilty, guilty
Man robbed at gunpoint ... by his cousin
As a general rule, never -- that's never, as in "never" -- declare people guilty of crimes they haven't been convicted of (let alone, in this case, charged with). It's true that nobody's named here, but with every detail -- date, time, address, "construction site," make and model of stolen truck -- you're getting closer to identities that people who know these folks could infer. It never hurts to follow basic standards, even when ... what's that again?
This is a family apparently in need of some intervention.
A man told Charlotte-Mecklenburg police that he was robbed at gunpoint Monday evening -- and that one of the two suspects was his own cousin.
HAHAHAHAHAHA! It's a laugh a minute, that armed robbery stuff.
One gets the impression, for whatever reason, that if this robbery had taken place on the tree-lined streets of Dilworth, somebody might have asked what was so funny about having your money and vehicle taken at gunpoint, by anybody. And the paper could have been spared some richly deserved embarrassment.
[Wednesday update: Did you think we were kidding about the geographic distribution of mirth in armed robbery coverage? Police are investigating a robbery and carjacking in a part of Charlotte which normally doesn't experience such crimes -- the southeast side.]
As a general rule, never -- that's never, as in "never" -- declare people guilty of crimes they haven't been convicted of (let alone, in this case, charged with). It's true that nobody's named here, but with every detail -- date, time, address, "construction site," make and model of stolen truck -- you're getting closer to identities that people who know these folks could infer. It never hurts to follow basic standards, even when ... what's that again?
This is a family apparently in need of some intervention.
A man told Charlotte-Mecklenburg police that he was robbed at gunpoint Monday evening -- and that one of the two suspects was his own cousin.
HAHAHAHAHAHA! It's a laugh a minute, that armed robbery stuff.
One gets the impression, for whatever reason, that if this robbery had taken place on the tree-lined streets of Dilworth, somebody might have asked what was so funny about having your money and vehicle taken at gunpoint, by anybody. And the paper could have been spared some richly deserved embarrassment.
[Wednesday update: Did you think we were kidding about the geographic distribution of mirth in armed robbery coverage? Police are investigating a robbery and carjacking in a part of Charlotte which normally doesn't experience such crimes -- the southeast side.]
posted by fev at 12:25 PM
2 Comments:
Rule Number One of heds comes into play again, eh?
And, yea, verily, it was handed down from Ladd Baucom to Fred Vultee to Ken Strayhorn that on the most holy of holies, Saturday night desk duty, thou shall not convict in a headline.
Go forth and sin no more.
Yah, for godsake I expect to be required to run laps at the very sight of such a thing. Doesn't anybody do the fundamentals anymore?
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