Police could be astonishingly parsimonious and presumptuous even with upstanding and fully cooperative witnesses. It was assumed that poor people could move at a moment’s notice, that their ties to whatever place they called home were not equal to those of wealthier suburbanites. Some cops, steeped in right-wing rhetoric about the “nanny state,” harbored deep philosophical objections to aiding witnesses with cash. One detective supervisor in Southeast during Skaggs’s term said that she saw it as her duty to make sure they got as little state money as possible. She considered the division’s
...more
