Reminder: One month from today, July 27th, is the 40th anniversary of six-year old Adam Walsh's abduction at the Hollywood Mall Sears Dept. store and his subsequent murder across the street from the Hollywood Police Dept. HQ.
In the coming weeks and months, you will get the chance to read and consider for yourself several critical, fact-filled blog posts here about the Hollywood Police Dept's longstanding deficiencies and consistently unsatisfactory performance.
Not just underwhelming in the past, but very much for the past half-dozen years as well since I moved here from next door Hallandale Beach, where I'd lived the previous twelve years.
Those accounts you read here will NOT be based on one or two individual incidents or a few random episodes that could have happened almost anywhere, but rather numerous examples of the same damn attitude and effort over-and-over here in Hollywood, boiled down from dozens of examples I personally know of involving improper, insufficient, and often apathetic and lackadaisical policing by the HPD.
That includes their less-than-helpful attitudes regarding victims of physical assaults.
I know something about that seeing as how I was assaulted two years ago less than three blocks from the Hollywood Police Dept HQ. And was less than impressed by the reaction I received when I walked to the Police HQ and told them what had taken place minutes before. THAT assault came less than one week after I personally had spoke to Police Chief Chris O'Brien at the tail end of a Civic Association meeting about crime in the city held at the Littman Center. I specifically spoke and asked about the perception among many people who can see what's right in front of them -many of whom were at the Civic Association meeting- that his dept. was simply not doing a good enough job for Hollywood residents. Accounts based on both my personal first-hand experiences and those of MANY people I know and trust in the Greater Hollywood community. People who are otherwise very supportive of most things in Hollywood. But the Police Dept. is NOT one of them, and there's a very good reason for that, as you will soon read. https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/status/1409292846553780228
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Adam_Walsh And yes, if you are a longtime reader of this blog, that includes things as recent as the Missing Persons case involving 22-year old Noemi Bolivar, an autistic woman with the mind of a 16-year old, whose disappearance in February outraged me and most of the people I know in this and neighboring communities, who, from the very beginning, saw the same inadequate and insufficient response by HPD as I had seen so many times in Hallandale Beach when I lived there. Volunteers did more practical leg work than HPD. As you will read soon enough, there are more than a few facts and similarities between the infamous case that took place 40 years ago and the one involving this young woman that took place just four months ago, where the HPD's initial response was, in my opinion, pathetic and shameful in every respect. Forty years later, I still recall EXACTLY where I was and who I was with when the first media reports came out about Adam Walsh's abduction, and the NUMEROUS false "sightings" of him all over South Florida. That includes where I was at the time, at The Falls Shopping Center. There, at one point, while visiting a friend who had a part-time summer job at a store there -and who'd soon be joining me in Bloomington at Indiana University- throngs of people came running by her store screaming that a boy matching Adam Walsh's description had been seen in the parking lot adjacent to the movie theatres there. It was like a mob scene and something I've never forgotten. We didn't know as we bolted from the store after locking it and ran behind the crowd whether it was true or not. My heart was racing, in my throat, just as my imagination was, since what if it was true? Of course, it was a false report, one of the many hundreds of such reports all throughout Florida that day, but I often thought back and wished that it had been true and he had been rescued safe and sound for his parents. Instead, of course, Adam Walsh's father John completely changed the dynamic of crime reporting and efforts to find missing children thru the program he hosted, as an advocate and champion for victim's rights, America's Most Wanted.
“It'll be VERY interesting to see what the City of Hollywood and its often tone deaf Police Dept. decide to do on July 27th, since that will mark the 40th anniversary of six-year old Adam Walsh's tragic abduction at the site of the present day Target, across the street from the current Hollywood Police HQ. John Walsh and his wife Revé's efforts to not let their son be forgotten completely by the public, like so many other cases across the country over previous decades, completely changed society's expectations of what Police Dept's and LEO agencies could and should be doing in the aftermath of such incidents. And, it also permanently changed the dynamic of how the news media -esp. local TV stations- handle and report on Missing Children/People and abduction cases. As I've remarked upon many times in emails and tweets, as well as on my blog, with respect to Noemi Bolivar, it had not always been apparent to the public that the HPD has taken those changes in the public's expectations to heart, since they often seem not to be up to the task required, and do considerably less that what reasonable people might expect from them.”
