As many of you know, I recently shut down my blog (Captain of a Crew of One) for personal reasons...fortunately, I still have an account on The Gun Blogs so I get the opportunity to share this with the community.
Recently, a story was reported regarding a CHP holder who stopped the attack of a deranged knife wielder who was merrily stabbing co-workers at a Tennessee Supermarket. A Memphis Police Sargeant was quoted as saying "we don't encourage people to take that kind of risk, he could have been hurt."
The comment was soundly and correctly lambasted by the gun blogging community. But did he actually say it?
I've mentioned the Virginia Citizen's Defense League several times on my Blog. It is an all volunteer, grass roots organization dedicated to protecting and restoring gun rights in Virginia. I am proud to be a member of this extremely effective organization.
One of the Executive Members of VCDL, who happens to be a retired Police Officer, had his doubts about the veracity of the quote so he contacted Sargeant Higgins of the Memphis Police Department. Below is the exact text of the VCDL alert sent out to members in the words of VCDL Executive Member Dave Van:
Remember Sgt. Vince Higgins? Sure you do. He is the Memphis Police Public Information Officer who supposedly offered the quote of the day when he opined that ".....we don't encourage people to take that kind of risk, he could have been hurt". He was referring to a Mr. Cobb who stopped the rampage of a knife wielding suspect in Arlington, Tenn. Oh, now you remember? Except Sgt. Higgins was quoted completely out of context and not even quoted correctly.
I spoke with the Sarge the day after our Alert came out. He returned my call and was friendly and gracious. He had 15 years as a street cop in a nasty section of town and we swapped some stories on how departments and politics can screw things up and how reporters do a good job of screwing them up all the time.
Here's what the Sarge really said and did. When the reporters gathered the Sarge took them through the motions of what happened and what Mr. Cobb, a CHP holder did. He praised Mr. Cobb as a genuine hero from start to finish saying he acted in a totally professional manner through-out the entire ordeal. He then continued to say that concealed permit holders were top notch and he'd rather have some of them ".....backing me up than some police officers I know".
Now, I know you're wondering where in the heck that reporter got that other part from. Here it comes. The reporter asked the Sarge what he thought of citizens jumping in to help. The Sarge said that he had no problem with permit holders but if it were someone who had no training with firearms, did not know the law and had just grabbed up a gun it might not be a good idea. Guess what the reporter grabbed up and ran with. Yellow journalism at its worst. Or, just what you would expect.
Sgt. Higgins is a really decent guy and a very experienced law enforcement officer. When I told him that if Maureen and I ever got down his way on our motorcycles we'd like to stop in and buy him coffee or lunch, his reply was "no sir, I'll buy you lunch". Yeah, like I'll ever let that happen.
I'm going to delve further into this and see if I can find out who the reporter was that filed this story. Sarge says he's gotten a lot of calls criticizing him and he wants to set the record straight. Consider it done on this front Sarge.
Dave Van
Some might argue that Sgt. Higgin's true statement was almost as egregious as the reported one. I'll not get into that argument here, I just thought I'd do my part in getting Sgt. Higgins' version of the story out. It doesn't sound like he considers himself one of "the only ones" and was given a raw deal by the press. Not that this surprises me at all. I have to wonder how many of the imbecilic remarks attributed to police officers by the press are really just constructs of the reporter's imagination?
