Sunday, July 26, 2009

294: Vallejo man takes hostage in 2001

294.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, June 13, 2001, "Man in Custody after Vallejo Negotiations; Refused to Comply”. What stands out about this 4:30 a.m. story is how much effort the Vallejo Police put into the ultimately-successful negotiations with suspect. He had his hostage. He allegedly had a rifle at her head. The hostage his stepdaughter.

I was not able to report in this story how long the suspect may have held the 26-year woman at gunpoint, but police said negotiations dragged on for several hours. The hostage-taker, police said, was a Polish immigrant. The man “may have law enforcement experience in Poland,” police spokesmen then surmised. The Vallejo Police Tactical Response Team [SWAT] participated.

The short story leaves one with questions in 2009. Why did Vallejo officials assume the unstable man had a background in police work from Poland? What kind of police work in Europe? Was the man bearing arms in Poland before 1989? After all, Poland was part of the Soviet Union’s Eastern Bloc of Europe. By all historical accounts, Poland was a dictatorial nightmare very nearly like the one fictionally described in George Orwell’s famous 1984. Poland was one of Eastern Europe’s more triumphant stories of the Cold War, yes, but no matter what the heroism in Cold War Poland, it was still a nightmare state.

No comments:

Post a Comment