What a surprise – truly – to see the Register report in its 11/8/07 issue that the Walworth County District attorney’s office will not prosecute a felony count against a Whitewater man who was involved in a standoff with the police recently. Outside the man’s residence during the standoff, armed city and county officers reportedly totaled 30 – that’s thirty, for the incredulous.
As it turns out, a county assistant district attorney doubts that she can prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the man in the standoff with police was armed. A premise of police concern was that he was armed. (That’s an element of the felony offense that Chief Coan sought in this matter.)
These events offer two surprises. First, even Coan’s friends in Elkhorn – on whom he has counted in the past – see that they can’t support his position in court.
Second, if the account from Carrie Dampier is to be believed, then she knew that the county prosecutor would not seek a felony charge (as Coan wanted) before Coan did. Strange, that the Register would publish the supposed fact of a gap in communication between our police department and Elkhorn.
Can that be true, really and genuinely? Dampier got the jump on Coan, who didn’t get a prior call from the assistant district attorney in Elkhorn, telling him of the news?