Police Inaction

So much for the police. A neighbour heard a child being beaten and called to report it-

"The people upstairs are about to kill their daughter! They are beating her and beating her and she is screaming."

Neighbors told First Coast News the beating continued for another 24 minutes.

"At first you could tell it was with a belt," said Raychael Harkey. "Then it went to a hand, then throwing the child around the room."

Neighbors called 911 two more times, begging for help.

The caller told the dispatcher that she was going to go intervene- but was told to let the nearby police handle the incident.

The officer close by is Officer Gabriel E. Dobkin.

An internal affairs report shows Officer Dobkin 2.9 miles away writing a speeding ticket.

During the stop, the report indicates Dobkin saw a truck pull into a drug store parking lot with expired tags.

Internal Affairs investigators say Dobkin wrote out the ticket and then sat in the drug store parking lot, waiting for the driver of the truck to leave the store.

At that moment, a priority one call for a "battery in progress" came, the most serious on JSO's scale.

Internal Affairs says Dobkin went inside the store to find the truck driver to see if he had insurance.

Dobkin fingerprinted the driver, and wrote him a ticket before driving away to help a little girl in trouble.

Officer Dobkin told Internal Affairs he has "had many of these type of calls involving children and parents," and he believed this one to be, "routine and not life-threatening," according to the report.

The officer also told investigators, "he didn't remember ever hearing or reading about the victim being five years old," saying it wouldn't have mattered to him because he considered the call routine.

Dobkin has been found to have further endangered the child by not responding immediately.

He has also been reprimanded for initially cancelling his backup officer but then calling him back on for help. Dobkin told investigators he didn't know why he did that.

Officer Dobkin has also been cited for changing the call from "battery in progress" to an investigation before arriving to the scene. Dobkin told Internal Affairs he based that call on his experience and belief the call didn't warrant a priority one dispatch.

Internal Affairs found Officer Dobkin incompetent. Investigators said he failed to take prompt action and failed to conform to work standards.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office would not comment on the matter.

Dobkin had been reprimanded in 2004 for incompetence for failing to respond to calls for service, and for initiating traffic stops on numerous occasions without notifying dispatch.

This piece of work has been "suspended". Not fired, just suspended- even though they know he's incompetent. I wonder if someone will have to die before this "Only One" loses his job?