Bill Bickel’s Crimeweek

An update to last week’s story about Nebraska’s Safe Haven law: Yesterday (October 20), the governor and members of the state legislature announced that when the legislature reconvenes in January, they will revise the law to conform to other states’ versions, setting the age limit at three days. Currently, Nebraska’s law allows parents to legally abandon any “child,” effectively setting the age limit at “under 18,” leading to several older children (including two teenagers from out-of-state) being turned over to state custody.

• Earlier story

A Nebraska judge has throw out State Senator Ernie Chambers’s lawsuit against God. Chambers had sought a permanent injunction against Him, charging that God had made terroristic threats against his constituents, as well a causing “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.”

The judge’s grounds for throwing out the suit: God wasn’t properly served because of His unlisted address.

Chambers sees ground for appeal, though: “The court itself acknowledges the existence of God. A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God’s omniscience.” Therefore, “God knows everything. God has notice of this lawsuit.”

How’s this for an alternate idea – the rest of us file a lawsuit against Senator Chambers an everybody else who wastes the court’s time and taxpayers’ money filing ridiculous lawsuits?

Many states have Safe Haven laws, allowing parents to leave their infants at hospitals or police or fire stations without fear of prosecution. The concept is, to put it bluntly, it’s better for newborns to be legally abandoned and turned over to the foster care system than to be left to die in a dumpster.

Nebraska’s version of the law wasn’t worded as carefully as the other, and specifies “children” rather than “infants” or “newborns,” and doesn’t set an upper age limit – which made the news recently when a Nebraska widower, who said he was “overwhelmed,” abandoned nine of his ten children, whose ages ranged up to 17 years.

Since then, two other teenagers, both of them from out of state, have been legally abandoned.

The Nebraska legislature plans to close this “loophole” when their new session begins in January – but personally, I disagree: Abandoning a child in this manner is an act of extreme desperation, and not something any parent is going to choose lightly. If a domestic situation is so bad that the parent is willing to permanently give up custody, then the alternative to being allowed to do so will likely be far worse.

Westroads Mall, the Omaha, Nebraska mall where 19-year-old Robert Hawkins murdered eight people Wednesday (and then took his own life) reopened today under what was called “increased security.”

Nobody specified what this “increased security” entailed; but realistically, what can really be done — and what would customers be willing to put up with — to make malls absolutely safe? Malls can limit the number of entrances and set up metal detectors at each one: inconvenient, but we’ve ready learned to accept greater inconvenience at airports and everybody accepts the need for heightened mall security in Israel. In many ways, the United States over the past six years has become the new Israel.

As for mall security personnel themselves… Reportedly, Westroads Mall security had their eye on Hawkins when he entered the mall for the second time Wednesday. Should they have been armed (and appropriately trained) and ready to take him out the moment he made a threatening move? Very likely this would have saved seven or eight innocent lives — but does anybody doubt this policy would lead to considerably more deaths in the long run?

Any suggestions? What inconveniences would you accept for the sake of safer shopping malls? Or… Is this not actually a problem?