If Toni Fratto is telling the truth, West Wendover Police Chief Ron Supp should resign.
The lackadaisical manner he treated the first missing person report, the failure to call a city wide alert frittered away the two golden hours when Mickey Costanzo was still alive and could have been saved.
We will go a step further, even if as we are inclined to believe Toni Fratto is a liar, Ron Supp should still resign. Not because his actions or inaction may have contributed to Mickey Costanzo’s murder but because he did not treat Mickey as his own.
Small town cops, the good ones anyway, have a sense of propiety. The town they police and the people in it belong to them, and it is their job, duty and privilege to protect them.
Old timers in Wendover like to tell stories about Deputy Earl Lacey and not so old timers like to tell stories about Fritz Weighall. About how missing kids or parents missing kids would go to those lawmen and how in a matter of minutes the whole town was looking usually with a happy ending.
Those men, and there are still the same kind of men and women in our police department, did everything a father or mother would do to find their missing child and that did not mean waiting until the next day to organize an “official” search.
A kid is missing now, you look NOW and while you are looking and pulling in officers for overtime or off speed traps or jaywalking detail you tell EVERYONE to be on the lookout too.
You don’t need a computer program for that, Wendover’s total population is less than 6,000 people we all live within five miles of each other. Getting the word out is the cost of a bullhorn and a gallon of gas.
Of course to call a city wide alert one must feel the same fear and deep dread as if the missing child was one’s own.
I would also think that the paper is somewhat culpable in this as well. You’re supposedly there to put the word out to the community. I think that the HDA Failed in their efforts as a bullhorn for the community.
We are glad you made that comment. While this website does average 500 unique visits a day and between 8,000 to 11,000 hits Chief Supp then and still now has forbidden his officers from using any kind of electronic communication with our newspaper, since we reported on his attempted arrest of Lauara Snyder and what turned out to be a bogus complaint against West Wendover Mayor Donnie Andersen. Had we had been notified rest assured the information would have been posted on our website within one minute of its receipt (yes, we can work that fast). We and no one could know how successful that would have been however we are haunted by the possibility. Last December when contacted by a frantic Elko woman who lost her dog in Wendover we posted the alert and the dog was noticed by one of our readers 20 minutes after it went on line. We wish we could have had the same opportunity to help with Mickey Costanzo. Unfortunately Chief Supp’s ego seems more important than finding lost children.