Scanner traffic and ringing telephones nearly drowned out those five words spoken by the assignment editor hidden behind a computer monitor stationed at the head of the room. But my highly trained ears picked out the message from all the chatter circulating through the beehive of a room.

'The crime specialist and Tonto ride again' I thought as I digested the marching orders. The last time the desk paired me with the specialist, I worked two shifts in one day. Would we start on one story only to abandon it halfway through the day to chase a second breaking story? That’s what happened the last time. That’s what happens most of the time when partnered with the crime specialist. Today would be no exception.

“We need to head up to the federal courthouse,” Glenn says after I inform him that I will be chauffeuring him around today. Minutes later, I find myself standing on the sidewalk with my camera pointed at the entrance to the courthouse. Deja vu? Not really. Most days with the crime specialist contain a trip to one of the many government centers across our territory.

This time, however, I wasn’t lurking around at the back gate to shoot video of deputies leading unfortunate souls in orange jumpsuits into the building. No, I staked out the front door waiting for family members of the accused to emerge from inside the halls of justice. Today’s quarry was the brother and mother of a man the FBI says defrauded the IRS. A little white-collar crime to add to the mix of violent offences I usually cover when I’m assigned to judicial business.

I camped out on the sidewalk for nearly two hours waiting for court to adjourn. Finally Glenn came out to warn me that our targets were about to take flight. I had no idea what the family members looked like so I tagged the record button on my weapon every time I saw someone push open the heavy wood doors of the courthouse. Glenn stood behind me and muttered “that’s not them,” when whoever exited the entrance was not the face we were looking for. This sequence of false starts went on for almost half an hour.

Finally, Glenn said “this is it,” when two men in three piece suits filed out from behind the door. “These are the family attorneys.”

I tracked them with my lens as they walked toward Glenn for about five seconds before turning the camera back to the door to catch the rest of the entourage. At first, no one else appeared from behind the door. Then I saw the double doors split down the middle as another suited man pushed passed the wooded barrier.

Suddenly, my viewfinder went black. I jerked my head away from the eyecup to find one of the family attorneys standing as close to my lens as he could without touching it. This has happened to me many times before. The attorney runs interference while the clients who don’t want to get caught on tape escape down the sidewalk. I quickly released the camera from the tripod and slid around the sharp dressed blocker to save the play. He had only obstructed my view for a second but it was enough to let the family members get a sizeable head start on me. From were I stood, I could only get the backs of their heads. I took off at a trot trying to get a face on tape. Glenn said, “It’s the man in the blue shirt,” as I raced to overtake the group.

About the time I got in front of the man in the blue shirt, I heard Glenn’s voice call out to me again, “The mother is over here.”

The mother decided to take off in the opposite direction from me and her blue shirted son. This time I had to run to catch up with the escaping family member. As soon as I got to her, she spun around on her heels before I could get her face. By this time Glenn decided the chase was too much and gave me the signal to break off my pursuit. I lowered the camera off my shoulder and bent over to catch my breath.

An hour after the debacle in front of the federal courthouse, I would learn that all of my efforts were in vain. Yep, we were scrapping our entire morning of hard work to take on a new story. Glenn learned through his grapevine of inside contacts that the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office was offering to take over all law enforcement duties from the Charlotte Mecklenburg School system’s security officers. CMS security is comprised of sworn officers who have the power to make arrests and are authorized to conduct investigations. Recently, CMS security has made the headlines because of a botched investigation into a former teacher who allegedly molested students at school. The former teacher was finally taken into custody, but police and angry parents believe CMS security didn’t act quickly enough to remove the teacher from the classroom. Other mistakes CMS security made on the case lead to a public spat between a local police department and the school system. The situation prompted the sheriff’s office to make an offer to take over school security.

We raced from the federal courthouse over to the county courthouse. No one in the sheriff’s office would confirm Glenn’s information. Time was quickly advancing toward our 4:30 deadline. We headed over to the Education Center to try for a confirmation there. We also had another small problem. What were we going to use for video to illustrate a spoken offer from the sheriff to CMS? Glenn already had a plan in mind. We could use a little video of the accused teacher being cuffed by detectives to start with. Then we needed video of sheriff deputies and CMS security officers.

While at the county courthouse, I popped off a few shots of deputies milling around the jail. What I was missing were CMS security officers in action. Glenn went inside the Education Center while I trolled the parking lot for a CMS security car. My search came up empty. I called back to the station to see if one of my fellow lensmen could search our tape archive for video of the elusive security officers. I was running out of time and I needed to get the live van set up for a live shot.

“I can’t find any video of CMS security officers,” a slightly distorted voice told me from my Nextel walkie-talkie phone. Man, we were less than an hour until air time and I didn’t have a key piece of video for my story. Sometimes when a story breaks so close to the newscast, we have to go with what we have to get the information out to the public. The file video of the teacher and sheriffs deputies would have to do. I continued to set up the van for the newscast.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a police car heading down the street toward the Education Center. Hoping the cruiser was a CMS car instead of the many CMPD cars darting up and down the busy city street, I stopped what I was doing to get a closer look. Sure enough, a thick green strip down the side of the car told me it was a CMS cruiser. I grabbed my camera and punched the record button as I threw it up onto my shoulder. The security car drove past me and stopped to make a turn into the Education Center. It had to sit in traffic for a good few seconds before making the turn and disappearing behind the building. At 15 minutes before our deadline I had finally collected all the video I needed to complete our story.

Glenn came out of the Education Center grinning from ear to ear. “They confirmed the offer for me,” he said pulling the laptop computer out of his brief case.

“I got video of a CMS security officer,” I answered his good news with more good news.

“Cool, now let’s get it on the air.”

---

How do you feel about the sheriff’s offer to take over CMS security? Do you think students would be safer if the sheriff’s department took over security for CMS? Or do you think there would be no change. Let me know what you think.