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    BuddahbeanRatherEnjoysTheStealthGraysBrendan O'Connor
    11/04/15 8:00pm

    Under the circumstances, I don’t think the children should be told until the grandmother or other responsible adult who will be taking temporary or permanent custody arrives. So that was the right call. Making it a PR story is absolutely gross.

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      adoubtfulguestBuddahbeanRatherEnjoysTheStealthGrays
      11/04/15 8:03pm

      I can see that side of it, but I still think he didn’t tell them because he chickened out and not because he had some better reason for not breaking it to them right away. 100% agree about the PR part.

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      violentglitterorgy3BuddahbeanRatherEnjoysTheStealthGrays
      11/04/15 8:08pm

      You make a good point about family needing to be there.

      the PR shit makes it all hollow.

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    Ashley FeinbergBrendan O'Connor
    11/04/15 8:06pm

    I hate to pull this card, but as someone who’s dad died when I was thirteen, I would have been furious and horrified to find out that the person I had been with for the past seven hours knew and chose not to tell me.

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      GoLikeHellMachineAshley Feinberg
      11/04/15 8:08pm

      Not to be a jerk about it, but did you have anyone there to support you? This sounds like these kids pretty much would’ve been on their own, emotionally, for several hours.

      I didn’t have a parent die young, but I did have a best friend die when I was around 10, and I’m glad my parents waited to tell me until they could both be there (my father was out of town that day).

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      MarksMakerAshley Feinberg
      11/04/15 8:14pm

      I’m sorry for your loss. But you know what? That’s not a “card”, that’s lived experience which adds weight and validity to your viewpoint.

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    adoubtfulguestBrendan O'Connor
    11/04/15 8:01pm

    Gross, cowardly, and wrong. He plain old chickened out. I don’t care how many Happy Meals they got, this Halloween is hideously ruined in their memories and this dude refusing to do the hard part of his job isn’t going to change that. I do think it’s nice that he started the gofundme, but someone else would have if he hadn’t so it’s really just another way of trying to look like the good guy instead of a weird creepy liar.

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      DoBetterResearchadoubtfulguest
      11/04/15 8:03pm

      And of course, it’s the comments agreeing with this stupid article such as yours that get approved and the ones that disagree that get left in the grays. Man, Gawker sure loves itself.

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      adoubtfulguestDoBetterResearch
      11/04/15 8:04pm

      It could also be partly due to the fact that my comment didn’t come from a brand-new burner account, but hold on tight to your butthurt.

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    thxobamaBrendan O'Connor
    11/04/15 7:58pm

    He was looking out for his own feelings, not the children’s.

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      violentglitterorgy3thxobama
      11/04/15 8:04pm

      BAM. This. Though I am not at all sure he is conscious of this. I think he truly believed he was sparing them something.

      Like the surgeon who didn’t want to tell me or my husband that he would be dead in a month from melanoma. No no...let’s just rack up thousands in debt to do useless procedures that just made him feel worse. Pallative care, given that he KNEW he would not survive? fuck that!~I actually believed he would live for a while. His final doctor considered this criminal and self serving of the surgeon. I wish people in positions like this would think more carefully of the ripple effect of their behavior.

      Instead of having invasive procedures, he could have been made comfortable, and tied things up, spent time with family..etc. Instead he was in pain, drugged up, confused, and I lost our home to the debt, as well as my beloved.

      BUT, hey, the surgeon didn’t have to have an uncomfortable conversation, so that was totally worth it.

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      GDSmithviolentglitterorgy3
      11/04/15 8:12pm

      No.

      Your experience is terrible — and I’m sorry for it — but as an adult with your own agency and options it’s not really relevant here, is it?

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    Brendan O'ConnorBrendan O'Connor
    11/04/15 9:01pm

    An editorial decision has been made to change the headline of this piece, which originally read, “This Cop Lied to a Bunch of Orphans.”

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      Chris RobertsBrendan O'Connor
      11/04/15 9:17pm

      You’re fucking trash.

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      noodlesinthefaceChris Roberts
      11/04/15 9:33pm

      “Let’s see, we’ve got a story about a cop who came upon the scene of an accident with two dead people in it. They get the address and go to the home, only to find four kids waiting for mom and dad to get home so they can go trick or treating. He attempts to be considerate, not thinking that assholes on the internet are going to blame him for this, and takes care of the kids all night long until grandma arrives.

      I know! Let’s say “ASSHOLE COP LIES TO ORPHANS”. Or maybe we can do “CHILDREN’S LIVES DON’T MATTER”. Or possibly “HOW CAN WE BE THE MOST STEREOTYPICAL ASSHOLE AND GIVE EVERYONE GOOD REASON TO THINK WE HATE THE POLICE EVEN WHEN THEY TRY TO DO GOOD THINGS? I KNOW LET’S RUN AN ARTICLE CALLED THIS COP LIED TO A BUNCH OF ORPHANS.””

      Fucking trash, Brendan is.

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    valis86Brendan O'Connor
    11/04/15 8:08pm

    You tell them. Period. End of story. This guy is in a position of authority, and I flat out guarantee the kids are going to (and deservedly so) have a distrust of authority for their remaining years. I wont go so far as to call it chicken, but I will go so far as to say he is in the wrong job. Maybe fly a desk if you cannot impart bad news AND be compassionate about it. Lord knows I made that choice.

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      adoubtfulguestvalis86
      11/04/15 8:11pm

      Exactly. Everyone’s acting like it would be heartless of him to tell them the damn truth about the most important thing that has ever happened in their lives. He has damaged their trust at the worst possible time and then used it to make himself look like a hero.

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      valis86adoubtfulguest
      11/04/15 8:17pm

      And that is the sad part; furthering himself through this. Look, bottom line is some are good at this kind of job and some are not. I am not. I understand my weaknesses (chess 101), and that is why I only break horrible news myself when the is no other alternative. Iknow he meant well, but jesus....those kids will never trust a uniform again. And again, deservedly so.

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    OMG!PONIES!Brendan O'Connor
    11/04/15 8:42pm

    When I was in my early 30’s, my mother called me on my birthday. She had bad news.

    She had had a nasty cough that my stepdad and I had been nagging her to get tested. She got it tested and it wasn’t good. It was Stage 3 diffuse small-cell lung cancer, almost 100% certainly from my mother’s 50+ years of smoking a pack a day.

    The 2-year median mortality rate was 80% and the 5-year median mortality rate was 95%. The doctors said she had between 6 months to 2 years to live.

    My mom said that she considered waiting to tell me, that she didn’t want to tell me that she had cancer on my birthday. But she understood that even if she had waited a week to tell me, it wouldn’t change the fact that she was going to die. She had to tell me sometime, so might as well just rip the bandage off and get it over with.

    That birthday sucked. It really did. No one WANTS to get that news on their birthday. No one ever wants to get news like that ever. But at least my mother told me the cold hard truth and didn’t try to hide it from me. She treated me like an adult. So I do celebrate my birthday with my family.

    The day that really sucks for me, year after year, is the day my mother died - not the day she told me she had cancer.

    I feel bad for the officer. But I feel worse for the kids. This officer should have sat the kids down and told them the truth. Yeah. It would have sucked. That would probably be the worst day of his career. But some day has to be the worst day of his career. He might as well take control of it and say to himself “Well, this is it. This will be the day that I talk about being the absolute worst.”

    As for the kids, they’re never going to enjoy Halloween. Ever. Because it’s the day their parents died.

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      thrill-oreillyOMG!PONIES!
      11/04/15 9:31pm

      “some day has to be the worst day of his career.”

      This right here. It’s a tough call, but we can’t act like kids (and particularly pre-teens) don’t know when somethings up. They knew, and he should have either found a way to tell them, or gotten a qualified professional in there to do it.

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      Norma NiloticaOMG!PONIES!
      11/04/15 9:58pm

      But think about how your story would go if it had been a random, unfamiliar ER doctor telling you on the early morning after your birthday that you’re too late and your mother was already gone?

      you’re own mother was the one to deliver the news, and help you absorb the shock of her impending doom,*in advance* and she just happened to deliver this news on your birthday.. some people might see that as a birthday gift..

      I wouldn’t reach as far as you did, and say that you;re comparing apples to oranges... but more like comparing oranges to grapefruits.

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    2DollarzBrendan O'Connor
    11/04/15 8:11pm

    Huh. I thought orphans travelled in packs, not bunches.

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      Armageddon T. Thunderbird2Dollarz
      11/04/15 8:17pm

      The collective noun for a group of apes is a troop.

      Orphans are a type of ape.

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      NoBunny2Dollarz
      11/04/15 8:19pm

      An “abandonment of orphans”, a sadly perfect collective noun. No word on foundlings, though :(

      http://collectivenoun.co.uk

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    phatplatBrendan O'Connor
    11/04/15 8:02pm

    There is no best way in this situation.

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      Dashiell HammletBrendan O'Connor
      11/04/15 8:01pm

      I agree that this story should never ever have been made public (by the cops, via Facebook). Ever.

      But damn, that is so heartbreaking shit that I doubt even Dirty Harry’s cold enough to tell those kids the truth. Not saying he should’ve lied, but maybe they should’ve sent someone (grief counselor) who was prepared to do that unspeakable job.

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        GoLikeHellMachineDashiell Hammlet
        11/04/15 8:13pm

        It’s not a stretch to think that it might be difficult to find a grief counselor in Morgan County, Georgia on Halloween night who is both ready and able to stay with a group of children for several hours while they wait on next of kin.

        On the publicity, for the most part, yeah, I think it’s gross. But I can see the Devil’s Advocate side, too - without the police publicizing it, it’s unlikely the family would be receiving the enormous flood of donations they’re about to get after national media gets ahold of it.

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