Judging, Animal Abuse, & Coaches

"Wow, Shoalanda, that's quite a potpourri of topics you have there!"

Yes, but they are connected. We've spoken on judging before. Everyone judges everyday. We hire and fire employees, decide whom to date/marry, and even if the person driving the Range Rover/Pinto will actually stop at the red light. We arrest, try, and sentence people who break laws. If we didn't judge, our society would be in shambles.

Family and friends can stand by a person accused of a crime, but they can't legally sit on that person's jury. We appreciate those who stand by their friends. We even choose to allow those who support Ronald Weems to post here if they so desire. Those who seek to denigrate our friends or current/past members of this blogging group do their friends no favors when they attempt to post insults here or on Facebook. If I personally don't like your opinion, I'm quite capable of pointing out the flaws in your judgment without insulting your friends who may not even feel as you do. Think about it.

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Whether you've read this blog for our four-year run or are reading today for the first time, you may not have scanned our columns enough to know what crimes/actions we really hate. Please remember, we hate the actions, not those who perform those actions.

If we despise any actions, it's first and foremost the attempt to take a child away from its loving parents (see Hottie Scottie). A close second is animal abuse.

Yes, former Muscle Shoals patrol officer Greg Scoggins killed a half-tame deer, not for food, but for fun, while on the clock. You can be assured it was hard enough to see his "side" when we believed it was for food. It wasn't some spur of the moment crime. Scoggins had seen the group of deer playing close to the road many times and took along his personal high-powered rifle to kill the deer.

From confidential reports sent to us, we believe Scoggins then recruited a family member (a legal adult) to assist in disposing of the deer's body. Can we tell you more? We could, but our friend Trader has done all the investigative work on this and will be publishing an account of the whole horrible crime on Pen-N-Sword. We'll add if all we wanted to do was malign Scoggins' name, we've been sent plenty of stories about his conduct over the years. We choose to focus on this crime alone.

Kicking someone when they're down isn't enumerating the facts of an ongoing case involving both animal abuse and misuse of taxpayer funds. We're sorry his family is involved in the crime, but we didn't involve them. He did. Remember that.

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Ahh, coaches, should we judge them--at least publicly? We've recently seen quite a bit of speculation on local forums concerning the Edward Jenkins attack on Rogers Coach Chris Krieger. If any readers aren't familiar with Rogers School, it's a relatively small Lauderdale County School located in the unincorporated area of Greenhill in the northern part of the county. The school serves K-12--quite a diverse student population.

Let's say a first grade teacher calls your six-year old daughter a twit. You ask around and find that the teacher has been verbally abusing other students and you then go to the principal. Hopefully, things are sorted out and your daughter will get a better teacher the next year.

What if it's a coach who called your first grade son a name, who denigrated his abilities, intelligence, breeding, etc.? What if you knew your son would have the same coach two more years in the future and even more if he decides to play on the high school basketball team? Not so easy to decide now, is it?

For those who have reasoned that few, or even none, have come forward to criticize the Rogers coach, we ask you to remember that with any coach in a small school, criticism may come with a large price tag.

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One final observation: We continually receive e-mails suggesting the misuse of public funds and sexual abuse should not be pointed out or judged. If we ignore it, it will go away. No, sadly it won't if we do nothing to deter it.



Shoalanda