Just had a nice telephone chat with a woman named “Kim” who says she’s the wife of one of the officers named in my June story about corrupt doings in the Dallas Police Department. Of course, I have everything wrong, she says. She accused me of not giving any of the officers in the story a chance to speak, and when I explained that I had, “Kim” switched gears and started complaining about how SOP rules won’t let them speak to the media without permission.
Then the discussion went to whether I checked the allegations against facts (believe it or not, we really do that kind of thing when we’re not playing online video games) and that I was only taking the word of two people against all of these good officers. Did I know Shanna Lopez failed eight out of 10 tests at some point during her days in the academy? And yet, I offered, she graduated in the top third of her class. “There’s a reason for that!” I was told. And then it wasn’t offered.
The most amazing suggestion followed. “Kim” asked why we haven’t done a story about Chief Kunkle and his love life. Capital idea, I thought.
She ended our chat with a salutation I’m not sure is in the last print of Emily Post: “We’re gonna blow you out of the water, idiot!” [click]
