For more than a year now, we’ve been flooded with very loud satellite signals from Scarborough Country and a creature called Nancy Grace about all the problems with your Duke lacrosse case. We were relieved to see last week that the authorities in Durham said everything was actually done properly. Aren’t you relieved to hear that?
Well, actually, no. You see, the authorities in Durham have a long history of not getting things right. They ran a loan program for inner-city businesses that gave most of the money to businesses that didn’t exist. Their yard waste dump caught fire after not meeting state standards for two years. They tested their residents’ water for lead, found some, then didn’t tell them the results. And it took 11 months to hire a new police chief after they offered the job to two people and they both backed out. So when current Chief Steve Chalmers and City Manager Patrick Baker said the Durham police did their job properlydespite massive evidence to the contraryno one should have been surprised. Even the mayor was stunned by that one and asked the state to investigate. While they’re at it, they might want to look into the slogan at the bottom of every page of the city’s report: “Good Things Are Happening in Durham.”
