The original story of Eric Wright, a hospital medic trying to get his stroking wife to the hospital quickly enough to save her life, was a nightmare.  Aline Wright, a cancer survivor and amputee, was stroking and her husband knew that survival depended on medical treatment as quickly as possible.  He did what he had to do to get her there, including running red lights.

Chattanooga cop James Daves saw this and did what he had to do.  And more.  From ABC News :

According to Daves’ written affidavit obtained by ABC News : The “defendant stopped [his car] in the ER entrance and jumped out and ran. Police made contact with Defendant at the passenger side of his vehicle and I grabbed the Defendant’s arm and he pushed me away scraping my arm with his fingernail. Defendant yelled and said it was an emergency…”

“Defendant pushed through the crowd and carried a female back into the emergency room and place[d] her in a room with no permission of the hospital staff,” the officer wrote.

Eric Wright has denied Daves’ statements.

“I never had any [physical] contact with the officer at all,” he said. And Wright said he did not enter a hospital room without permission. “In fact, I called the emergency room to alert them and let them know we would be arriving,” he said.

Ah, the old fingernail scrape.  Not quite a paper cut, but maybe it hurt like a machete?

The story takes some additional nightmarish twists and turns, from Wright trying to turn himself in as demanded by Daves and refused, only to have the cops arrest him at home the next day.  Then there was the $7,500 bond, since he was such an obvious flight risk.  He naturally was suspended from his job at the very same hospital because of his felony arrest.  All as his wife remained in her hospital bed, the two having been married only four days earlier.

Some asked whatever happened to the days when police cared more about someone’s wife and less about asserting their petty authority?  It’s not common sense, but priorities.  Saving a life trumps the fragile ego of a cop.  Then there was the question about the cop’s lying in his report to exaggerate the facts and manufacture a crime.  The fingernail machete.  Why did the judge buy into it?  Not merely buy into it, but enough so to impose bail?

But Turley followed up with this bit of news, that Police Officer Daves has been suspended with pay for an internal affairs investigation. 

“At this time Officer Daves has been put on paid administrative leave. He has been rellieved of all of his police duties until the completion of the internal affairs investigation,” Chattanooga Police spokeswoman Lt. Kim Noorbergen told ABC News.

Suspended with pay is a soothing way of saying on vacation.  It calms the public outrage by suggesting that the police aren’t totally insane.  The charges against Eric Wright have now been dropped, and spokesmodel Noorbergen feels just awful about the whole thing.

“We deeply regret this incident has occurred and hope to meet with Mr. and Mrs. Wright at their earliest convenience to discuss the events of June 16,” Noorbergen said, adding that an internal affairs investigation would continue and that the police department would also review policy and procedures to determine whether any changes should be made.

Need a new policy?  How about saving a life comes first?  How about not lying in charging documents?  How about fingernails aren’t machetes? 

But what, pray tell, are they investigating?  The Chattanooga police know what happened, as does anyone interested enough to follow the story. 

Every time an incident such as this occurs, the official position is to call a press conference and announce that they are investigating.  Its purpose as a crisis management tool is obvious, it delays interest until the rest of us have moved on to the next instance of outrageous police misconduct.  If they’re lucky, someone will die at the hands of a cop in another jurisdiction and this whole sorry affair will be forgotten.  Thank the Lord for short attention spans.  Thank the Lord that there’s always another cop doing something horrible somewhere else to suck the attention away.

And then everything returns to normal.  Daves goes back to his desk with a stern talk from his commander not to make them look bad again.  That’s the gist of the problem, drawing negative public attention.  Don’t make us look bad, you dope.  The only time the public is supposed to know we exist is when we’re heroes. 

The sad reality is that this crisis management technique works exceptionally well.  Aside from David Packman at Injustice Everywhere, the guy who actually does the boring heavy lifting of chronicling police abuse and misconduct, the rest of us (me included) move on quickly to the next nightmare.  The last one becomes merely an old post, as attention shifts to the newest, shiniest incident of police induced horror.

And we wonder why nothing seems to change?  Maybe it’s because they’re still investigating while Police Officer James Daves enjoys his vacation.  He might as well, as it won’t be too long before he’s back to the daily grind.