I've traveled all over this crazy globe. I've had the opportunity to interview thousands of people--many fascinating--some extraordinary. It's a great gig!
Case in point: the last couple of weeks--starting with a story about a cop named Billy Long.
Billy Long is an undercover detective with the Phoenix police department--one of those guys who lurks in the shadows.
And it was there on the fringes--in one of those dark and dangerous corners that Billy Long became aware of a series of vicious crimes aimed at a specific group of people--victims not prone to report stuff to police.
Det. Long learned that members of the valley's Vietnamese community were being hit by brutal home-invasions robberies. Entire families rounded up at gun point--taken to the center of their homes--tied up with chords--the men often beat-up--the women sometimes raped. Then all of the family's money and valuables were stolen. As bad as the story was--it seemed to be made worse by the fact that the alleged perpetrators were also Vietnamese immigrants--young thugs targeting members of their own community.
Of course the bad guys had the inside track--they know the victims. They know that a lot of law-abiding, hard-working Vietnamese families bring with them from their homeland a distrust of banks and cops--meaning that a family's savings was often stashed somewhere inside their home--and that after being victimized many of the families were either too afraid of possible reprisals or too ashamed of the physical assaults to call the cops.
Hiding behind barriers of language and culture the bad guys were having their way. And a bad situation valley-wide was getting worse. That is until a cop named Billy Long got on the case. Long is a veteran Phoenix officer with dark hair and a face that's more boy scout than marine. But as one of his sources on the street told me "Longs a tough guy." Tough enough and smart enough certainly to know that to solve crimes like these home-invasions it was going to take a lot more than just showing up at Vietnamese businesses and say "what's up?"
So what does Det. Long do? He starts learning the rather challenging Vietnamese language. He travels to Vietnam on two different occasions to immerse himself in the culture. He then brings his expertise back to the streets of the valley where he recently played a pivotal role in the arrests of 12 alleged Vietnamese gang members. Leaders from the valley's Vietnamese community applauded the crackdown. During a news conference the soft spoken Det.Long basically said he was just doing his job.
I say job well done.
Which leads me to the other side of the cop coin--a story I covered the very next day--the story of Colorado City Town Marshal Fred Barlow.
The 34-year-old Mr. Barlow--and his cousin Deputy Town Marshal Preston Barlow--the pair are now facing the revocation of their badges as a result of their loyalty indicted polygamous prophet Warren Jeffs.
...more to come.....mw