What do you do if you’re a cop and you get a call about a child’s being beaten to death, but you also see opportunities to extort money out of the public for speeding and having expired tags? If you’re a certain Jacksonville policeman, you naturally choose the latter because it’s a way to show people who’s boss. As a result, it takes you 24 minutes to respond to an urgent call 3 miles away.

Officer Dobkin told Internal Affairs he has “had many of these type of calls involving children and parents,” and he believed this one to be, “routine and not life-threatening,” according to the report.

The officer also told investigators, “he didn’t remember ever hearing or reading about the victim being five years old,” saying it wouldn’t have mattered to him because he considered the call routine.

Dobkin has been suspended but not fired. He was reprimanded in 2004 for similar tardiness in responding to calls. I look for him to return to active duty once the storm blows over and probably get promoted with a hefty raise in a few years.

(Thanks to Charles Everett for bringing this to my attention.)