You have to admire a person who is willing to put his future career on the line by telling the world that his boss should be fired. On Pg. 25 of the Daily News (7/16/08), Police Lt. Joseph Gumbs makes an emotional plea that Commissioner James H. McCall has provided no effective leadership and should be fired for being absent from his Job for extended periods. This should really come as no surprise. As Deputy Commissioner McCall, he fraternized with the employees he was supposed to be leading and they bungled a lot of investigations which carried to the National Press. Who can forget the Post Office Killings of the tourists who were visiting for a wedding at the start of his command. The police ignored solid evidence and just beat a confession out of a crackhead or two. This was later recanted and the crime not solved. At the end of his watch was the little boy in bra and pantyhose who was killed and they tried to frame the step father while ignoring all other leads.
After he left the position as Deputy Commissioner and returned to ATF, they gave him the exulted and somewhat ceremonial position of Liaison to the United Way Fund for ATF. Now with a horrible record like that known well in advance of his appointment, it’s almost impossible to conceive why he was the Governors choice for Top Cop. Thus, it was not surprising that at the start of his new job, the investigation of the murder of the tourist on St. John was bungled and made national press. This is just more of the same bad police work that had occurred under his previous command.
It’s no surprise that McCall proved to be just as incompetent the second time around. The surprise is he is so bad that St. Thomas Cops would break rank and publicly bitch about his incompetence. All it took was the killing of a retired policeman who had the bad luck to walk in on a robbery in progress.
Tags: Police, St. Croix, VIPD, Virgin Islands
