More Bad Checks.

I touched off a little firestorm this morning with this post about bad checks in Great Falls. At first I said that "bad check cases essentially will not be pursued" in Great Falls. That was an overstatement on my part, so I changed the post to read "bad check cases will be pursued only if very particular, specific guidelines are met by the business."

I was sharply criticized by several, mostly anonymous posters. Primarily, it was suggested that I didn't do my homework:

• "Do you ever check your facts before you post these kind of items?"
• "Perhaps you should go back and investigate further before sending a broadside across the bow of the new police chief's desk without all of the facts in hand."
• "Just where did you find the "very particular specific guidelines?" You must have obtained them somewhere? Can any member of the public get them, and where are they posted?"
• "It's not about being defensive. It's about you getting your facts straight, or taking some minimal effort to back up your claims."
• "Face it. You were talking out of the wrong end and got called on it. "

My response was that I saw "an article in the Tribune within the last year or two on this very issue. And the article listed certain circumstances where the GFPD stated it will not pursue or investigate bad check claims." Ok, so I dug a little deeper.

And I found this policy of the Cascade County Attorney's Office. If you review the policy, you will see that the County Attorney's Office outlines some pretty specific guidelines and procedures for bad check cases. Further, the policy says the County Attorney's Office "cannot prosecute" certain cases, such as post-dated checks, second (two) party checks, and checks under $25.00. Yet, if one reviews the Montana Code on bad checks, there are no such limitations. (Only bad checks over $25.00 are illegal?)

Now, I am not going to debate with you anonymous posters whether or not the County Attorney's office's limitations on what they can and "cannot" prosecute are reasonable. They might well be. And if you go back and read the original post, I was merely questioning whether it might make sense to be more aggressive in prosecuting even the little cases.

But I think now that I have documented the "very particular, specific guidelines" for prosecution of bad checks, and have documented that some bad checks simply will not (whoops, "cannot") be prosecuted even though writing them is still illegal, your complaints of my not having my facts straight look a little silly. Yes, even a little defensive.