Crime. Crime! It's been a crime-y sort of week — hell, season — and law enforcement-type activities made for a bunch of the local headlines Thursday, as well.
The city of Tampa will host a gun buy-back program next Saturday, June 27 at River Tower Park. For those who don't know, a gun buy-back program is when all the people who have stolen a gun or been given a stolen gun by someone else at some point, but would actually never use it, trade it in for $50. This sounds ineffectual, until you realize that some criminals that actually use guns are dumb enough to give or sell guns they've used to other, less shoot-y criminals. And a gun gone is a gun gone, I guess.
A national "Medicare Fraud Strike" by the U.S. Attorney General and Department of Health and Human Services netted nearly 250 charged, including five from the Tampa Bay area. That's embarrassing. With so many elderly people around here, five seems like we're not even really trying.
In the last week, and a half, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office has disciplined three employees for screwing up paperwork or other intake protocols that resulted in inmates not being released when they should've been — a mistake sweetly referred to as an "overstay," like the inmate didn't split when he or she was supposed to. The employees responsible have relegated to "reflective sabbaticals," or unpaid suspensions.
And finally, add another traffic accident caused by an driver going the wrong way to the region's inexplicably high tally. An inebriated 41-year-old man hit two cars and a house, seriously injuring another party, in Bradenton. Please, folks, be careful out there this weekend.
Image of handcuffs by Klaus with K via Wikimedia Commons.
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2015.
