We once again suspended the story comments function on our Web site on the Kasota shooting case grand jury decision.
A grand jury found there was not enough evidence to charge Le Sueur County Sheriff's deputy Todd Waldron with murder, intentional or not, in the shooting death of Tyler Heilman.
That people were angered at this verdict was no surprise. When that anger turns into speech, we have to put some limits on what can be said on our story comment system on our Web site. It's not that we don't understand the anger, we just find that it's a discussion that will never be resolved.
It does more harm than good. With some of the comments I saw, civility was thrown out the window.
Law enforcement and a certain number of the general public will agree the ruling was just. Heilman's friends, and a certain number of the public, will call the ruling unjust.
We've taken some heavy criticism from law enforcement on how we played the issue, favoring Heilman. But we've had just as much criticism, if not more, saying we are not asking tough questions of police and we're somehow slanting stories to favor law enforcement.
Whenever we have both sides of a case like this calling us unfair, it usually means, we were very fair. I believe we were, and while I am always willing to listen to criticism, I don't see another way we could have reported the fact and the emotion surrounding the issue.
When one caller asked why we weren't asking tough questions of in their words "cops who kill" I said we do. It's just you can't print what someone doesn't say. Law enforcement and the prosecutors decided against holding a press conference with their key witnesses.
I wouldn't expect them to.
They have promised to offer more information to explain the jury verdict in a few weeks. We'll be there, and we'll be responsibly reporting the case and the facts
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