CatMac Swipes Back at Mall Manager's Lukewarm Response

The author of A Little Simplification received the same stodgy e-mail today from Bicentennial Mall Manager Mike Cole that LiberFreddio did.

She replied (and how!):

While I appreciate the effort to say SOMETHING, to provide SOME response to the many emails i know your offices have received about the reckless lack of overnight security in Bicentennial Park, the "official" response below is, indeed, no response at all. Respectfully, a regurgitation of irrelevant policy is neither helpful nor reassuring. Indeed, the only "misunderstanding" it has clarified is my apparently naive hope that the Commissioner's office would stop ignoring this issue.

Point by point, the response below indicates a resistance to assume responsibility for OVERNIGHT security in the park. No one is arguing that there is insufficient security there during the day. But the two-hour long, unobserved rape of a local resident did not occur during the day. It didn't occur during an educational program for children. It didn't occur on a well-lit path. It occurred OVERNIGHT in a part of the park that could not be seen by drive-by officers. None of the clarifications offered in the response address that.

I am grateful that the agency is "exploring possibilities" and willing to "entertain the idea" of citizen-run security. I hope any of the agencies involved in protecting Nashville's citizens will offer more specifics and a precise timeframe for when the response will include some action. Back to basics: Who will do what when to make sure that the park is safe overnight?

That is the way to hold bureaucrats responsible: demand specifics and a timeframe for securing the park. And it sure as hell didn't hurt to point to the idiocy of appealing to children's programming by day when the place is open to crimes by night.