You know you hear a lot of bad publicity about our police department (Columbus) but Starkville Police Dept. takes the cake.
My daughter was recently in a minor fender bender over there this week in very busy “back-to-school” traffic. They were rear-ended and because there was damage to the car, they called the police for a report. The Starkville policeman pulled up, never got out of the car, never asked if anybody was hurt, never asked what happened just said “give me your license and proof of insurance.”
Another officer proceeded to pull up in another patrol car. I think he did get out but not once asked if there were any injuries. My daughter and her boyfriend were hit pretty hard but because they had on their seatbelts, they weren”t hurt however neither officer bothered to even ask how they were.
The second officer sat in his car and did the report. Neither officer bothered to ask them what happened. They did ask the other driver, the one who was at fault, what his side of the story was. Finally when the officer (if you can call him that ) finished the report, he waved their licenses out the window and said, here is your license back, told them when they could pick up the report, said “have a nice day” and drove off.
I was shocked that they were so unprofessional. I”ve noticed they do have a lot of very young police officers in Starkville, but my gosh, are they not trained in procedure when someone has a wreck? My daughter was pretty shaken up and these guys in uniform didn”t even bother to see if they were OK.
I have to admit in the few wrecks I”ve been involved in Columbus, the first thing the officer does is get out of his car and ask if everybody is OK, no matter how minor the wreck may be.
I work in Starkville and it is scary to know how unprofessional their police are. Maybe the Starkville Police Department needs to consider sending all their officers on some kind of training on how to handle a wreck and how to be a little more cordial to the folks paying their salaries.
If Chief Lindley doesn”t see this letter, I sure hope someone will show it to him.
Ellen Culpepper
Columbus
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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