Update on Campus Crime Alert #5 - University Announcements
Posted February 9, 2006 2:50 PM
Oxford police reported Thursday, Feb. 9, that they arrested a 20-year old female Miami University student on one count of inducing panic and one count of making a false police report in connection with an alleged incident Sunday, Jan. 15.
That police report led to the issuance of Campus Crime Alert #5, which warned that a female student reported to Oxford police that on Sunday, Jan. 15, a white male attempted to force his way into her Brown Rd. apartment. The female victim said she was able to get the door closed and the suspect fled the scene.
Oxford police say information received after numerous hours of investigation revealed that the alleged victim had made a false report.
Yikes.
Granted, I wasn't the one doing the investigation, but I just don't quite trust this decision. Did they really need to arrest her? Couldn't they have just dropped the investigation? I'm kind of left with the feeling that I can't rely on the police if I need to report a crime; what if I don't have enough evidence? Will victims of crime worry about this? --Or-- Are we really so easily influenced that other crimes will lead us to reporting one that we create? Or can we get so swept into the fear of high-profile crimes that we can imagine our own crimes. I just don't know. I can't make sense of this situation, but either way, it's frightening.
Well, I don't know. If someone falsely reports a crime, this is a crime in and of itself. Perhaps she was reporting an ex-boyfriend or objet d'amour in a vindictive manner and the cops worked it out. Or a million other completely plausible scenarios.
Don't be too quick to judge the cops. Wait a few years until your initial posture of questioning scepticism hardens into a brittle cynicism; if you're brittly cynical now, what will you do when you're older?
Ok, so some random girl gets arrested for making what the police believe to be a false report. Meanwhile, the VP shoots a man, causing a heart attack, and the police say that it was an accident. Hmmm... I'm pretty sure that in the former case there is no one that was hurt as a result but that there is an old man near death thanks to the latter case. Shouldn't there at least be negligence charges brought against Cheney? What are the state laws in Texas regarding "accidental" shootings?