Vegas Cops Try To Change The Record

Here's something that may not be as odd as the notion of O.J. Simpson being caught up in a possible armed robbery, but it's definitely weird.

Today the Vegas police had a press conference. Near the end of it, Cpt. James Dillon wanted to make it clear that the case would receive neither special nor harsh treatment because of its O.J. involvement. But what he said was:

"The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is committed to conducting a thorough, biased and complete investigation."

Obviously he wanted to say "unbiased." But he didn't. What to do?

Well, if you're Metro, you try to change history, even history that was seen on live TV by millions of people. So, to that end, they sent an email to the media about an hour ago with the "slightly altered" audio from the press conference. Now, I can't ever remember Vegas police issuing an audio recording of anything before. In fact, the reason I had to watch the thing on Fox News was that they issued a press release at 11:37 a.m. today announcing that the press conference would be at, uh, 11:40 a.m. Even as badly as I drive, I can't get across town in three minutes. Other reporters had already gathered over there an hour or so before, but I didn't even know where "there" is because I cover the cops around here so infrequently. Plus, I was afraid as I watched via TV the media gathering that if I got in the car, I'd miss the thing. I had been promised a press release informing me of the time of the press conference and I stupidly assumed they'd give me more than three minutes to get there.

Anyhow, so the very helpful Vegas cops sent out the audio with but one change.

The change? They cut out the word "biased." That's all.

My piece for The New York Times on this freaky situation is here. God forbid we have an O.J. trial in Vegas. Eeeek.