Right in the middle of what is supposed to be its new, improved War on Crime, it turns out the Memphis Police Department has seriously bungled its handling of the serial rapes in South Memphis.
It can scarcely be denied that the department failed to keep the public fully informed as a pattern to the rapes developed. Some of the young girls might not be victims today if the department had done something as simple as use the media to warn citizens in the area to lock their windows and stay on guard.
Memphis Police Director Walter Winfrey says he is waiting for the results of an investigation that would take a couple of weeks to determine "if there was a breakdown in communication and if there should have been a pattern identified."
We've heard that one before. Three years ago the police "investigated" why the public was not warned about a serial rapist preying on teenage girls walking to school in southwest Memphis. It's sad but no doubt true that the department needs to have a written policy on such things. And it's hard to imagine that South Precinct street officers even remotely aware of the case data weren't making certain obvious connections during casual conversations before shift change.
Winfrey might take some lessons from Mayor W.W. Herenton, who was able to get the police department to restructure itself in just seven days. Herenton did it by putting people's feet to the fire. Winfrey can do the same with this investigation.
Why the delay? There can't be more than a dozen (if that many) people to interview. You call them on the carpet, starting with the South Precinct commander and moving down to the officers who responded to the crimes. You get everyone's "side" of the story, and you make a decision.
We can only hope that Winfrey hands out punishment fit for so serious a "breakdown in communication" instead of sweeping it all away with a generic excuse that Mistakes were Made or that there are Problems with the System.
If this is an example of the department's capacity for swift action, then we don't have much hope for its new policy of "zero-tolerance" law enforcement.
We can't help reflecting that the media treatment of President Clinton's recent knee injury seemed, even in an age of full disclosure and tell-all journalism, a mite excessive.
After all, the nation somehow managed to get through 12 years of F.D.R. -- a presidential reign that included the Great Depression and World War II, two of the gravest crises in American history -- without being made fully aware that its president had certifiable medical disabilities resulting from an earlier bout with polio.
We take it for granted that President Roosevelt functioned well and heroically despite what in those days was regarded as a "handicap" and a serious one indeed. President Clinton's yuppified hobbling, suffered in the course of walking downstairs while vacationing with golfer Greg Norman, was unfortunate, but it was hardly in the same league. The damage to Clinton was repaired quickly, without need of anything more than a local anesthetic.
Yet all the TV networks led with lengthy crisis-flavored segments on the injury, and followed it up for days. Ditto with the newspapers, which everywhere ran the story big, with sidebars and subsequent fully developed reports.
Please! Both the president and the media are in bad need of some obvious physical rehabilitation -- namely, the development of a stiff upper lip.