Local newspaper upset with professional police department

The Swanee Creek Times is going out of business. The newspaper was founded in 1897 and been published daily since day one. According to the papers editor, the Swanee Creek police are to blame for his paper not selling.

Chief Ed Galley says his department of 50 officers has done nothing wrong. Paper editor Jim Rivdell says that is the problem, the cops don’t do anything wrong.

“A paper needs some controversy to sell. Most cities you can always fall back on the cops for some controversy. But Chief Galley runs a good department with good people, so I got nothing to print.”

In the five years Galley has been police chief the department has received few citizen complaints. The chief credits this to the use of dash cameras and implementing body cameras also.

“In the past is was our officers words versus the words of the public. But now we have video replay ability.” The chief gave us this example, “We had this 19 year old claim an officer used excessive force. On the video the kid punched the officer first, and the officer responded in defense. We posted the video to our Facebook page and all the comments were saying the kid got what he earned.”

The police chief using Facebook is also part of the problem for the newspaper. “We spent a ton of money to upgrade our web page, but no one goes to it. The cops put all their videos on their Facebook. By the time we get a copy and post it to our web page everyone has seen it already on Facebook.”

The paper has will publish their last issue on March 30. In the mean time Rivdell is hoping an officer does something stupid. “Just one good controversy would jump start my subscriptions and save the paper. Seriously can’t they violate some rights and help the paper out.”

Chief Galley says while he is sad to see a local employer close, he is also happy his officers are so diligent about doing good work.