Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Apparently I'm Misleading

In a blog post from a few weeks ago (that you can read HERE), I received a comment that laid it on pretty thick. I will post what he/she said, that then respond the best I can. I hope whoever wrote it, reads this.

Mr. Phillips, this article you posted by the Belleville News Democrat is misleading. The unfortunate deaths of these two girls was not the result of a police pursuit. An Illinois State Police Trooper was responding to a motor vehicle crash where there were injuries and people possibly trapped inside their crashed vehicle(s). You have also manipulated the actual story from the paper. I live in the Belleville area and am quite familiar with this tragic event. If you are going to use this article for your cause then please correct it to it's proper content as printed by the Belleville News Democrat. As it is posted on this site now it is wrong and seemingly intentionally misleading to benefit your cause. Now, please don't misinterpret my reply as a negative toward your site. I agree, to an extent, your efforts to maintain smart pursuits but at the same time I also believe if you intentionally manipulated this article you are serving no better of a cause then the reason this site was originally intended. The death of your loved one.


First, I would like to ask how I manipulated the actual story from the paper? I purposely posted only the section of the article concerning me. The reason why is that I don't want to take away from the efforts of Mike Fitzgerald and his newspaper. That is why I linked to the rest of the story, in order to encourage readers to follow it and read the whole story, thus giving credit to the Belleville News Democrat. They would much rather prefer you read their story at their site... Not mine.

Although the incident in question was not a pursuit, Mr. Fitzgerald wanted my opinion as to police vehicular training, an area I am certainly qualified to speak about. I never said a word, in the article, or the blog post in question, about police pursuits.

What Mr. Fitzgerald and I were trying to get to is that police driver training takes a backseat to firearm training, yet instances of vehicular accidents are far more common. Nothing more, nothing less...

I ask Anonymous to please respond and be more specific. Again, at no time did I misrepresent myself, the Belleville News Democrat, Mike Fitzgerald, the incident in question, or the facts of the matter.

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