Ray "The D.A." Larson claims that 99% of those accused of a crime are guilty of that crime. Lexington Mayor, Jim Newberry, recently claimed that people whose lives didn't make much of a difference in this world don't matter much. Police officers' lives, he claimed, now they matter, they make a difference.
Mr. Doneghy is being charged with murder in the accidental death of police officer Bryan Durman, Never-mind that officer Durman was in the road on the passenger side of a vehicle without a protective vest on. Never-mind that officer Durman's lights were not being used on his cruiser. In addition, the road was narrow and very busy at the time of the accident. Keeping these circumstances in mind, along with the mindset of the mayor and Ray Larson, let's discuss whether Glenn Doneghy can get a fair trial.
What do we know?
The night of this accident I had prepared and e-mailed Mayor Newberry and the city council a letter asking why police officers named by Deborah Wardlaw before her murder had not been investigated for that murder. /watch The very next day Mayor Newberry, shamelessly, used the death of this officer to answer my question. The mayor, the sheriff, several other high ranking local officials and, oddly, two legal representatives for the city attended a city council campaign debate and took the time to eulogize officer Durman.
Mayor Newberry started by explaining that some people are making claims of conspiracy involving police officers. He dismissed my claim and others by comparing us to the "tin foil hat crowd". He then claimed that officer Durman's death got him thinking. He thought that some people live lives that don't matter much. Police officers' lives make a difference, he claimed, their lives matter. /watch His answer to me, defined, is that Deborah Wardlaw, a prostitute, didn't matter. However, the officers that may have murdered her live lives that do matter. Thus, the reason why he will not investigate police officers for the murder of a prostitute. My guess is that Glenn Doneghy fits into Mayor Newberry's lives that don't matter category and officer Durman fits into the mayor's lives that do matter category.
Ray "The D.A." Larson can be observed online and heard on WLAP AM's Sunday night broadcast with officer Don. During the show he likes to show off his extensive knowledge of rapper slang terms. While discussing individuals and cases by name he will call the accused anything from jerk, thug, gangster to the more tame terms like trash and hoodlum. However, it seems that these terms are reserved for the poor, African-Americans and minority criminals. Listening to the show a definite divide becomes apparent in the way Mr. Larson feels about white collar crime perpretrated by middle to upper class white people and crimes perpretrated by the poor or minorities. Let's take a look at just a few examples.
Glenn Rahan Doneghy made a deadly mistake and he panicked. A good man, husband, father and police officer tragically lost his life that night. However, Glenn Doneghy did not plan to commit murder or take another person's life that night. Mr. Doneghy has had a very hard life and has been treated for mental health issues in the past and continuing to this day. An organized society must punish crime amongst the population. However, America overwhelmingly incarcerates more people than any other country. America has 5% of the population of the world while incarcerating 25% of the prison poplation of the world. This is in part due to the faulty thinking of over-zealous prosecutors, some racist others not, that are more interested in a WIN for their record books than doing what is right for everyone involved.
When I combine the facts with the elitist view of Mayor Jim Newberry, the racist rants of Ray Larson and the tendency for Americans to make heroes of police officers, I am not so sure that justice will prevail in the case against Glenn Rahan Doneghy. Studies now show that treatment works much better than incarceration for those with drug or mentally related issues. In fact, a 2002 Open Society Institute survey found that 63% of Americans believe that treatment is a better approach to drug abuse than incarceration. I can only hope that some of those people will be sitting on the jury when Mr. Doneghy goes to trial.
I'll be talking more about this case and we'll go in depth in our examination of the incarceration rates in America and the vast difference in the sentences between the rich, poor and minorities in the next article. Feel free to contact me or comment on this and related articles.
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