Kenny Lane (Former Salisbury Police Officer), Rowan County, NC
♦There are two major flaws with Chief Collin’s letter. The first is that simple assaults are not documented in written reports unless the assault is domestic in nature or some non-typical circumstance warrants documenting. (A suspect’s unwanted touching of a child that does not meet sexual assault or indecent liberties charges for example) A standard assault is not documented with an incident report. WBTV isn’t indicating how many written reports their investigation supposedly includes. The total number of written misdemeanor reports will be lower than the felonious assault reports as all the felony reports require documentation. Obviously, the number of misdemeanor assaults is actually significantly higher but the written reports will not reflect this. Look at FBI stats for assaults and you will see homicides are greatly exceeded by aggrevated (felony) assaults and both are greatly exceeded by misdemeanor assaults. Now see if the SPD can produce written, documented misdemeanor assault reports in anything approaching the number their felonly assaults would indicate by the ratio national averages would indicate. The written reports are going to indicate either the misdemeanors are not all being reported OR that Salisbury defies national trends and assaults escalate to felony injuries far in excess of national rates.
The second flaw is there is no such thing as “knockout game” in police reports. The incident is recorded as simple assault. Almost all of us are familiar with a “smash and grab” burglary where a thief breaks out the window of a business, grabs an item and flees. But there are NO “smash and grab” reports. They are all classified as Burglary/Forcible Entry - the same as an incident where the thief enters and rummages through the business. You do not pull up “knockout game”; you search simple assaults (or aggavated assault, criminal homicide, etc.) A CAD (computer aided dispatch) list will show a car was sent to an address and whatever notes the communicator may attach but it is not an incident report. There is no way to determine from the CAD notes exactly what happened on each case. CAD notes do not include a complete narrative as a written report would have. IF all misdemeanor assaults are documented this will match the written reports turned in. This will not even be close.
I have personally responded to incidents in Salisbury where a victim reports an unprovoked attack by person they report not knowing. Without speaking to the suspect determining the “why” they may be randomly assaulting people for fun (knockout game or whatever name/ term they apply), a gang initiation, has mistook the victim for another person they were mad at, or have been planning a common law robbery but were frightened away before completion. An unprovoked assault by unknown person has occurred. That’s what the “knockout” game by definition is. It would require a truthful statement from the suspect for the reasoning to be known. IF Chief Collins was able to locate each of these suspects and get such a statement, and all denied playing the game and gave some other reason he still couldn’t claim truthfully to know the game hasn’t occurred. It typically targets homeless, fellow teens or older victims. Homeless and teenagers are known to be less cooperative with law enforcement than other groups and frequently do not report victimization at all. Ignoring the non-reports, and assuming Chief Collins was able to locate and obtain a truthful interview from every suspect in a case where an unknown person assaulted someone, wouldn’t his time have been better spent making an arrest and clearing the incident rather than attempting to disprove “knockout game” was the motive? Should the victim be comforted to know they weren’t assaulted randomly but as gang activity or a partially completed common law robbery? My guess is they would instead prefer knowing the assailant, whatever his motives, had been criminally charged for his actions.
It would appear more likely, to me, that Chief Collins merely ran the written reports (again primarily domestic) and claimed this was all misdemeanor assaults. I would certainly like to know the number WBTV is basing their report on and how this compares to the FBI averages for total assaults and murders.
