Shhhh! Ramsey County Sheriff Bostrom and Police Units Working Well Together

Mainstream media reports "crime" the way that Disney Pixar movie dog characters notice "SQUIRREL!!!" With a publishing principle of "the more gore the better," the Minneapolis police receive major weekend coverage for having to shoot a person brandishing a knife and for officers shooting other officers in the process of shooting dogs. Couldn't a few backups have brought enough officers to take out a person with a knife without violence? Couldn't the police have simply waited for the dog owners to safely secure the dogs instead of shooting the dogs and each other? Hmmm, shouldn't we as reporters notice that the Minneapolis police are not working well together and quite frankly resemble a bad comedy more than a professional police force? And do notice that all of this Minneapolis activity is responsive, not proactive investigation and planning. 12 articles cover these events yet the articles do not provide comments on the police process that would help the reader understand how well the police are doing.

In contrast, the Ramsey County Sheriff's office, in cooperation with other Ramsey County police departments, performed a synthetic drug bust in St. Paul. This happened on Thursday morning, with no reports of shootings or injury. A four year old on site was safely secured. 12 articles also covered this event. Yet the articles missed the real news of the new Ramsey County Sheriff Bostrom successfully implementing he new Violent Force Team, the collaboration of all Ramsey county police departments. The previous Sheriff Fletcher was defeated in the previous election in part because of his connection to the scandal-plagued non-cooperative Metro Gang Strike Force. Also note that the raid is the result of proactive planning and investigation, not just a responsive action. Indeed Ramsey County Sheriff Bostrom and other local police departments are proactively preventing more prescription-drugs-turned-into-party-drugs abuse by providing free prescription drug drop-off programs that safely dispose of prescription drugs. The real news story is here is the huge positive change in the Ramsey Sheriff's office. Good policing always seems to be invisible news compare to "SQUIRREL!!!", oops I mean crime reporting.

Indeed, it would be nice to have always have crime stories done in context with history and analysis, so we could understand not just that crime happens but how our Sheriff and police departments are dealing with crime.