Face the consequences
A 14-year-old girl who lives in an apartment on Flamingo Road got into a fight with her mother last week. She accused her mom of using her razor. Her father tried to quiet her down. She kicked him in the groin. He slapped her.
The teenager called police, claiming she had been beaten by her father. Then she called again, claiming her father was coming back home and that she was bleeding from her arm and had a black eye.
None of that was true. The girl’s mother says neither she nor her husband were home when their daughter made the calls.
In fact, the mother was at the hospital, being treated for kidney failure. Her husband had gone to pick her up. When they arrived home, the mother took the phone away from her daughter and explained to dispatchers that the situation wasn’t what she had made it out to be.
But it was too late.
When an officer showed up about an hour later, he was calm and polite. He explained to the parents what their options were for dealing with their daughter. The mother told him her daughter had rage issues and was seeking treatment. The officer left without making an arrest.
That cop was not 28-year-old Metro officer James Manor, who had a young daughter of his own at home that Wednesday night. James Manor was one of two officers dispatched to respond to the 14-year-old’s second call, at 12:49 a.m. Thursday morning. He didn’t make it.
A pickup turned into the road in front of him as the policeman sped down Flamingo Road. There was a flaming crash. The other driver, in the larger vehicle, survived. Officer Manor did not.
Some witnesses report that Officer Manor was operating his cruiser at a high rate of speed without his emergency lights or siren as he responded to the call. But there’s still no doubt who set this chain of events in motion — by knowingly breaking the law.
When teenagers can defy reasonable parental discipline by threatening to call police and have their fathers arrested, when children old enough to invent credible-sounding fake emergency calls can do so with complete impunity, we are a society in trouble.
Placing a fake 911 call was a crime, the last time we checked.
This young person should, at the very least, stand before a judge and be sentenced to some community service. Perhaps in a hospital ward, helping tend those seriously injured in auto accidents … if not the morgue.