Delayed Justice

Detective Sergeant Chris Postma serves on the Major Case Team of the Grand Rapids Police Department.  As such, he deals with a lot of murders and other…well…major cases.  It has fallen to him to be in charge of the unsolved killing of Mina Dekker.  But imagine, he was born some time around the 30th anniversary of that case; it would be unrealistic to expect him to carry every bit of knowledge about it in his head. So, when we called he was willing to take the time to review the file at our request.  It’s not a big file and there’s the sense that some things are missing…either because they are or because the investigators had committed almost everything to memory and some items where never written down.   We haven’t hurried through parts where Sgt. Postma looks through records; that’s in the nature of what we’re trying to convey: this approach is not instantaneous or prepackaged.

Yes, it’s on old case, perhaps unsolvable at this far remove, but Sgt. Postma acknowledges that it’s an active case, still open.  He also observes that while a lot has changed in police methodology since 1938, a lot also has stayed the same: police officers talk with people in hopes of finding the missing piece that will solve the case. Those relational skills are vital.