A week ago tomorrow, Tamara Jewel Keepness disappeared. According to media reports, her mother says she was put to bed at 11 pm. and gone in the morning. The police refuse to characterize the disappearance as anything more than a “missing person”, which I suppose is beaurospeak for “we have no clue where she went or how.”
Question: This little 5 year old simply got up at 3 am and walked out the door? Do you know of any 5 year old, up until 11 pm, who would not be dead to the world until well into the next morning? Things about this disappearance don’t ring true on a lot of levels, including the media’s insistance on describing the father as deeply distraught and “pleading” for the safe return of his daughter – the actual taped interviews of the parents show remarkably calm, underwhelmed individuals. It may be cultural.
I don’t have any search and rescue expertise, and I suspect that there’s information they are not releasing to the public, but it seems to me that the restricted area the police concentrated on for the first couple of days (9 block area) was a strange approach. They’ve since expanded the search and are finally including fields outside the city, but to me, this is very little – and very late, if this little girl had indeed just wandered away.
When I was under 2 years old, “Butch”, the farm collie, and I took a saucepan and walked a mile to the neighboring farm in the space of an hour or so. I suspect I was running away in rebellion over some disciplinary action by my mother – the saucepan suggests I planned to fend for myself. Turned myself in to a neighbor, instead.
But, the notion that a lost or anger motivated 5 year old would only make it a few blocks before hunkering down or getting trapped somewhere is illogical.

Regina’s Crimestoppers number is 306-545-8477 Amber Alert Website

There’s a live news conference on right now. Some twit just asked if any native elders have had “visions” that have been followed up on. *sigh*
We can onlyhope they find her with a disgruntled relative, or somewhere equally benign. Otherwise, propsects are pretty dim.

The Saskatoon Police Service has suffered a black eye or two in the past few years. But it appears the citizenry isn’t above taking advantage of it.
In the past two years, 112 complaints have been laid against members for inappropriate conduct. 7 were founded. Yesterday they announced that they’re fed up.

This week a 23-year-old man was arrested six months after he was convicted of lying about allegations of Police Abuse. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail but had failed to show up for his sentencing hearing. The Saskatoon Police Association said it would follow up any false allegations with legal action. “If you’re going to lie about something a police officer has done to you, we’re going to pursue criminal charges or we’re going to sue you,” said spokesperson Stan Geortzen.

Can’t say that I blame them.
Freezing deaths of native men over the past years have been laid at their feet, despite any hard evidence of police involvement. And this winter, two native men were found, nearly frozen, on Saskatoon streets. The metabolic effects of alcohol, insufficient dress and poor judgement can have that consequence. Those incidents did not involve police accusations – because they were found and survived to tell their tale.
Like the thousands of claims for compensation for abuse in state and church run institutions in the past, these cases tend to produce an avalanche of opportunist claims by those who want in on the compensation fund, or in the case of police-suspect interactions – leverage against the charges they’re facing.
Beaurocracies have been turning a blind eye to these abuses for too long, harming both the taxpayer who generally foots the bill for the crimes of others through the funding of compensation packages, and the deserving victims of abuse and misconduct, whose genuine suffering is overshadowed by frivilous claims over imagined or overstated slights.