VIDEO: Immokalee's Thomas talks Jackson Lab; the sheriff; Adji Desir
[snip]
Lytle: One more question: Adji Desir. Does the community have hope that they’ll ever find that child alive? Do you have a sense?
Thomas: I don’t know what happened to that young boy. I was a little upset with the way we handled it on the front end because the boy was slightly autistic, and he couldn’t have done what they thought he had done when they were looking for him — climbing over fences and what-not. Somebody had to take him somewhere.
They should have done the spread much larger, much quicker, to try to find out where that boy was.
Lytle: He’s been gone now for over a year.
Thomas: Over a year. But then again, in this country we don’t treat everybody the same when it comes to that.
Lytle: Fred, what are you saying?
Thomas: Two boys disappeared within the last two months in this country. One little freckle-face kid with glasses and another little brown skin boy. You hear about the freckle-face kid with the glasses regularly. You heard about the brown-skinned boy once when it first came out.
I’m telling you we have still this kind of a problem in this country that we all need to work out. Because this country is great because of all of the best of every other country we have been able to bring to this country. And we need to respect that.
Lytle: Are you talking about racial prejudice and for that reason Adji’s case didn’t get as much attention as perhaps a white boy’s case would have been?
Thomas: Exactly.
Lytle: Have you shared that with the sheriff?
Thomas: What I told the sheriff is, rather than think he ran away, you all need to spread out quickly and assume that somebody picked him up and then come back that way. Because he couldn’t have run away. He couldn’t have gotten over the fences. He wasn’t going to survive out the swamps behind Farmworkers Village. So they should have thought that somebody tried to take him and work that way and work their way back in.
Video at link:
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/jul/08/video-jackson-lab-sheriff-adji-desir/
This guy is a "civic leader". Not sure if that mean's he is also a politician. He had some pretty controversial things to say. And I'm not wanting to start any arguments about his words here. But as it put Adji back in the news, I thought it needed to be posted anyway.