Nomination for Hero Badge
Order a widget from Amazon and they will deliver it to your door on the same day. UPS, Federal Express, and a host of others make a billion dollars a year, seeing that packages go from point A to point B, without getting lost, broken, stolen or delayed. Two deputies are tasked with moving a prisoner from the courthouse probably a matter of blocks. They didn’t make it, both of them are dead, the prisoner is injured and five kids don’t have a mama or daddy. If Fed-Ex can do it without incident, why can’t law enforcement? Second-Kansas-Sheriffs-Deputy-dies-from-injuries-following-shooting.html.
It’s not the same. There’s no comparison. You’re being unfair. Crackpot. Yeah, that fixed it, shoot the messenger. Eliminate all the bullshit, emotion, mystical and what is left is getting an object from one location to another in a safe economical fashion. It doesn’t matter if it’s a .99 cent replacement part or Charles Manson’s bastard child, somebody on the other end is expecting delivery. The moves are the same, as is the potential for loss.
The big boys looked at their system and designed it to handle everything in much the same manner. There may be some protocols that vary because of value, but the system doesn’t have to be reconfigured to accommodate the occasional special order. They fulfill the needs of a supply chain that is longer and more complex than anything the Sheriff is liable to confront.
The Sheriff’s office looked at their procedures for moving from point A to point B and decided the task could be accomplished with two deputies. Did I mention the defendant’s extensive criminal history? He has been tried twice for murder. He was recently charged with another murder. I don’t know if he was handcuffed, secured to belly chains, and shackled. It is also unknown whether the defendant was carrying trial paperwork or if one of the deputies was burdened with it. I suspect, but do not know if the transfer from the courthouse to the car took place entirely within a secure area. It does no good to overpower the deputies if the defendant cannot subsequently escape the secure area.
Fed Ex and others in the industry devoted sufficient resources to meet daily needs while the public entity devoted enough resources to meet a best-case scenario. Failure, in either case, would result in an erosion of the public trust that the entity entrusted could get the job done. Apologists for the Sheriff will attempt to place the blame on the dead deputies. They paid the price for their lack of competence. It does not absolve the Sheriff from blame that there were insufficient management controls in place to override a defective plan and be able to devote sufficient resources to implement a safe and effective plan.