Before we started the Independent, I worked at the Provincetown Banner, where a weekly feature was the “police blotter.” That’s what we called it, at least, but it wasn’t full of juicy details about what the police had been up to. It was just a list of all the people who had been arrested that week and the crimes they were charged with — which is public information in our legal system.
When we launched the Indie, we ditched the arrest report. We decided that the raw list was a poor substitute for real crime reporting and was often misleading. There was no explanation of what led to an arrest, for example, and no follow-up. If the charges were dropped, or the defendant was acquitted at trial, that generally didn’t make the paper. And getting the most telling facts wasn’t easy.
One year the Indie had a reporter, Josephine de La Bruyère, who was determined to get them. She went to Orleans District Court every day and figured out how to get access to the case files. We discovered that much of what our police and courts deal with is related to alcohol and drug use.
Some readers miss the old arrest report and ask us why the Indie doesn’t cover crime. It’s true that we don’t publicize every drunk driving arrest or domestic violence incident that happens in our towns. But we do report on crime.
Take, for example, Christine Legere’s Feb. 15 story about David Delgizzi of Weston, who owns millions of dollars of real estate on the Cape, exploits the low-income tenants who live in his neglected and unsafe properties, doesn’t pay his taxes, and endlessly weasels out of showing up in court. That story was just the most recent of at least 14 articles we have published about Delgizzi’s misdeeds.
And then there’s Berni McEneaney, the elusive “financial adviser” from Marstons Mills who was entrusted by the late restaurateur Napi Van Dereck with managing his estate, and who has proceeded to harass and evict Van Dereck’s devoted former employees (many of them Jamaicans) from the apartments that Napi intended as their long-term homes. In the latest chapter of this infuriating story, as many as 13 Napiville tenants have been told by McEneaney to get out by April 1.
Sam Pollak’s report in last week’s Independent was the fifth we have published about what looks like a crime, even though McEneaney and his collaborators — who appear to include lawyers and judges — have never been arrested or held to account.
Like Delgizzi, McEneaney won’t respond to questions. We want to know why, as conservator for Napi’s wife, Helen, who has dementia, he has removed her from the hometown she loved and is shuttling her between North Carolina and Florida and keeping old friends from contacting her. Maybe there’s a legitimate reason — or maybe it’s what it seems like: elder abuse.
So that’s another reason we don’t publish the local arrest report: the most inveterate criminals in our community are almost never arrested.
