Missing Baby Lisa Irwin: Are Police Under Increasing Pressure to Solve Lisa's Case?
As Nov. 4 draws near it will be one month to the day when 11-month-old Lisa Irwin was reported missing from her Kansas City home. Some observers are wondering if police officers are facing increasing pressure to solve the mystery of the little girl's disappearance.
On Oct. 11, Kansas City police Capt. Steve Young said, "We don't feel any pressure to accuse anybody; we are under pressure to do what we can to find a child," according to The Kansas City Star.
Young's statement was made twenty days ago, as police along with neighbors and volunteers search the community where baby Lisa was reported missing. The child was taken from her home, according to parents Deborah Bradley, 25, and Jeremy Irwin, 29, during the morning hours of Oct. 4.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Since then, police have received over 975 tips and have cleared almost 800 of those tips.
Over the past week, there have been a number of eyewitness reports, such as a suspicious individual being seen carrying a baby, and a surveillance tape of a man dressed in white as he left a wooded area, at 2:30 a.m., the night Lisa disappeared. None of these discoveries appear to have unearthed any leads for investigators.
Still, it appears that the main parties involved in the case, namely the parents of baby Lisa and police investigators, have grown increasingly frustrated, and clashes between the two groups appear to be more and more frequent.
Members of the family's defense team have intimated that police have been conducting searches for the benefit of the media, as defense attorney Joe Tacopena said on Oct. 24 to ABC's "Good Morning America":
"It really is maddening to me to listen to this police spokesperson come out there, and instead of informing the public, and more importantly the family, about leads and the status of the investigation and the manhunt, he comes out and makes these statements. And, quite frankly, they've [parents] done everything they've been asked to do...They have nothing to hide. They want answers."
On Oct 24, Young also had this to say to the network:
"We need them to sit down apart from each other, with detectives, and answer the tough questions detectives have for them concerning what they may or may not know about anything, who came and went [the night Lisa disappeared]."
On Friday, Tacopena, on behalf of the family, was granted a delay by police of a scheduled interview with the half-brothers of Lisa Irwin. The meeting is reported to have been scheduled for a later date.
This was an important meeting for investigators, who explained that they had spoken briefly with the siblings, ages 6 and 8, on Oct. 4, but they had not been granted access to the brothers since that day when their sister was reported missing.
Kansas City police officer Darin Snapp revealed that investigators looked forward to taking DNA samples from the boys. There were DNA samples taken from the home previously that were labeled "unknown," and investigators planned to use the boys' DNA to eliminate some of the unknown samples.
The police are seen as protectors of the peace, as well as the providers of security, so as the days continue without a break in the case, and as the public continues to see the matter as being unresolved, will police be forced to respond to the pressure and make a charge or an arrest in this case?
If so, observers hope such a decision will be based on the thrust of the evidence before them and not solely out of expediency.
