Published: August 16, 2008 10:10 pm            

Tales from the newsroom

Sometimes our world gets scary on a moment’s notice

In our newsroom, we sometimes get so excited listening to the scanner. On Wednesday of this week, as we wiled away a goofy morning (which seemed more like Funky Friday), the dispatcher came over the scanner sounding somewhat breathless, and announcing that a caller had informed an armed man was robbing the Cellular One store.

Of course, this was quickly followed by a call from our intrepid circulation assistant, Jessica Davis, who has the best nose for news I know (though why she’s not in the newsroom, I’ll never understand) and was camped out at OMI when all the cops ran out at once. She immediately called us to see what was going on. I think she should have been deputized a reporter, dropped her orange dip right there and gone off to cover that.

But nobody asked me.

Several from our newsroom did run off to see what was going on. I got tickled when someone asked on the scanner if they had a description of the gun, and the dispatcher said, very seriously, “It was a black one.”

Not a pink deer rifle. That makes a difference.

Thank goodness our reporters knew to shoot photos and ask questions from a respectful distance, since the suspect and all the police were armed. (Our Friday paper stated the suspect was arrested that same night.)

While this was going on, my eye was caught on the Internet by a report from Helena, Ark. What caught my attention was the town, since my mama lived there when she was growing up, and I feel certain I’ve been there at least once on our many sojourns into that state of my parent’s upbringing through the years.

It seems that there is a crime wave going on in Helena these days, which could date back to before the city merged with its rival, West Helena in 2006. According to a story by Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell, the city has been under a 24-hour curfew for a week, and officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in a particular neighborhood.

The city council voted unanimously to expand the curfew into any part of the city, as needed. The people who live there want the random shootings and violence spurred by drugs to stop, no matter what.

But an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas is threatening to sue. Mayor James Valley is undeterred by this threat, however, according to Gambrell’s story.

The story also states that drug dealers carry AK-47 assault rifles, so they feel justified in their police being armed with military-style M-16 or M-4s, some with laser sights, and short-barrel shotguns.

I truly hope the police, mayor, city council, etc. in Helena/West Helena, Ark. get their conflict resolved, and restore some order to a place I doubt resembles what it was when Mama lived there.

And I also pray that our city never has to employ those measures. The AP story said that the city, at the eastern edge of Arkansas’ rice fields, is in one of the nation’s poorest regions, thus contributing to the crime rate.

I sincerely hope these hard economic times don’t drive our town to these extremes.

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Deanna Brown is a Daily Sun staff writer and editor of “exp ...” Her column appears on Sundays. She may be contacted by e-mail at deanna@corsicanadailysun.com

        

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