Cops, drugs, youtube, and blogs

So I’ve been a neglectful blogger in the past week or so. I apologize for that.

Many of you have probably seen the article I wrote for today’s paper about video of a drug bust by Lee County sheriff’s deputies and federal agents which somehow ended up on youtube. This is a story that many people in Lee County have been aware of for a while now. I was only able to begin officially reporting on it last night though, because a motion filed by one of the defendants’ attorney for the first time mentions the existence of the video in a public way.

So, upon finding out that there was a public document which mentioned the video (since removed from the internet), I returned to work at 7:30 p.m. yesterday to get the story in. WRAL, I’d discovered, was also looking into it, and I’ll usually do anything in my power to avoid getting beat on a story by a TV station that’s based 40 miles from Sanford.

Anyway, I had to tell my superiors to make room for the story because by that time the front page was pretty much almost done. So I was working with a limited amount of space, and when that happens, lots of details get left on the cutting room floor. This is a story with plenty of details, and while I had to make some tough decisions last night about what should and shouldn’t go in my story, this whole blog phenomenon really takes some of the pain out of those decisions. So here is at least one more very important piece to the story you may have read this morning:

There is a temptation to look at this story as the Lee County Sheriff’s Department vs. The Sanford Police Department. That would be a mistake. Yes, Sanford Police Chief Ronnie Yarborough and Lee County Sheriff Tracy Carter certainly both made statements that contradict one another. That was an important part of the story, because one of the biggest questions in this narrative is “why were there Sanford Police officers at the scene of a drug bust in an unincorporated part of Lee County in the first place?”

But both men also made statements to me that, unfortunately, I couldn’t include. Yarborough, who claims his men were asked by sheriff’s officials to be on the scene in a support capacity, said “I can’t say what type of mix-up in communications may have caused this type of thing to happen.” Carter told me that “a mistake was made, and it’s been dealt with. We need to move forward with this.”

Nobody who pays attention disputes that relations aren’t perfect between the two departments, but to cast this situation as an outgrowth of those conditions is probably not fair. Leaders in both offices have said mistakes are what led to the situation. I think that’s important.

In other news, I’ve discovered through the grapevine that a couple more of my friends have jumped into this blogging business:

*Jay is a friend of mine dating back about 10 years. We graduated together from Lee Senior in 1998 before attending our first year of college together at ECU, where even then we had some pretty spirited conservative/liberal debates. Jay’s blog is mostly about politics.

*Lindsay is another friend of mine whose blog I discovered a couple of days ago. I met Lindsay through my friend Ross, who she’s about to marry. Her blog makes me hungry.

Check both of them out!