Palatine police responded about 9:30 PM Tuesday to a missing person report at an apartment building in the block of 200 South Clubhouse Drive near Northwest Highway and Rohlwing Road Palatine, IL. Police found the body of man who is believed to have been caught in a trash compactor while looking for his cell phone. Police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office identified the victim as Roger Mirro — a 56-year-old resident of the apartment building on the third floor.
Mirro’s wife called police about 9:30 p.m. when she arrived home, and her husband was not home. She told police she had communicated with her husband by phone about 5:00 p.m.
Police interviewed neighbors, and found a neighbor with information that led to the discovery of Mirro’s body. The neighbor told police that Mirro asked for a key to the trash room in a lower level parking garage of the apartment complex because Mirro needed to check to see if his cellphone was accidentally thrown out down the garbage chute.
When police arrived in the trash room, they found a lock removed from the door, and a ladder propped up against the trash compactor. Mirro’s body was found inside the trash compactor with injuries consistent with trauma caused by the trash compactor.
Map of area of apparent accidental death in a trash compactor …
Cardinal Note: As of June 5, 2013 — up to and including the date of this article — police incidents related to the above police agency are not reported in real time or within a prompt time period. Police protecting their realm of investigation and police activity, have chosen to use encrypted radios to withhold their police communications, which were previously open to the public and news media via monitoring public safety scanning radios — with no known negative results locally.
The delayed knowledge or entirely blacked out knowledge made possible by encrypted police communications may protect certain police operations and investigations, but it also puts the public at risk in situations such as when armed and dangerous offenders are at large and other similar situations. In other cases, the delayed or blacked out information inhibits or prohibits the possibility of the public providing early witness accounts before a criminal trail goes cold. Citizens are much more likely to recognize or recall suspicious or criminal activity if they are aware of the criminal incident within minutes or hours of its occurrence. The most serious incident involving dire results would be a trail that is allowed to go cold in the case of child abduction.
The lack of real time information from public police dispatch also weakens an effective neighborhood watch program mostly working to prevent property loss, but also preventing possible violent crimes.
Police have alternate ways to transmit tactical, operational or investigative information, while still keeping their main public dispatch channels open for the best balance of public safety and police safety.
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