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By Lisa Ace
anthony deni

it appears to be selective news items......on monday, aug.4th, around mid-day, at 202 north spruce street in batavia,ny....four city police cars, one amblance, and one fire dept vehicle, plus a mercy flight vehicle.....all converged at this address.....a short time later two police officers exited the residence with one man...handcuffed and put in the ambulance....how is it that no news media seemed to notice....???????

Aug 12, 2014, 12:24pm Permalink
Howard B. Owens

There's a few factors ...

First, unless it comes across the scanner as some major event (or even semi-major, if not much else is going on), I'm not rolling on it.

If there's nothing that strikes us as interesting that comes across the scanner, we're not posting it.

An arrest of itself isn't necessarily that big of a news item (all arrests are, I think, news). Here's a plausible scenario (though I have no idea if it's accurate): Ambulance rolls to a house because of a suspected overdose, which also prompts a police response. While there, police find a warrant suspect on a petty larceny charge who just happens to be hanging out that day at that address. That person gets led away in cuffs and it looks to neighbors like he was arrested for murder or something, when that's far from the case. A petty larceny arrest is something that will make the police blotter, but we're not doing banner headlines on it.

If it was really big news, Batavia PD would have put out a press release pretty quickly.

If it's a minor arrest, it very well could have been in the Law and Order column posted today. I have no idea what arrest you're talking about, so I have no idea if it's been released or not.

Handcuffed and taken to the ambulance could also mean mental health case, and we're not reporting it.

It's also possible a person was taken into custody for questioning and released without a charge. In 98 percent of cases, that wouldn't be news, or least not something we'd report.

We find out about crime-involved news three ways:

1) The scanner (we've never been able to hear everything going on and with the new radio system, we hear less).

2) Press releases from law enforcement (putting us totally reliant of government agencies).

3) Reader tips. We don't have an omniscience machine to keep us in the know on every little thing that happens. If you know something and don't tip us to it, don't blame us for it not getting reported.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying, a finger wagging comment about something not getting reported on a post about a dog trick contest is a little over the top, don't you think? My contact information is on the about page. You're always welcome to send in an e-mail and ask questions.

Love your comment, Jason.

Aug 12, 2014, 1:33pm Permalink

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