Interesting detail missing from the Stare affidavit

An interesting bit of information was skipped over by Steven C. Vanoy and Ken Ballantine, Newark City police detectives, in their affidavit charging city council candidate Frank Stare with soliciting.

The Advocate has on its website a PDF file of the Stare arrest affidavit and charge. Here's the link. It runs seven typed pages of sometimes excruciating detail, but of course the name of the alleged victim and all information about her had been blacked out in the Advocate's copy.

So detailed is this report that it even mentions minutiae such as this: "After a brief pause in which paper could be heard shuffling around in the background..." Also, "... facial expression was one of shock and/or being stunned." Also, Stare's home address.

But in all that detail, they forgot - or maybe not - to mention exactly what it was that bothered the complainant when she "informed Fulton she did not like the way in which the NPD officer handled the complaint on 10-12-07."

Another Advocate article makes mention of this problem. This is the article that credits Scott Fulton, director of the Licking County Municipal Court Probation Department, with bringing the complaint to the attention of Newark Law Director Doug Sassen. In it there is another mention of the officer who took the report.

"The officer who took the report has been cleared of any wrongdoing, Newark Safety Directory Kathy Barch said, declining to say anything else about the criminal investigation."

Whatever the officer said that pissed off the complainant may indicate something about the complaint or the complainant. Maybe not, but it seems strange that this information - at least as important as "paper could be heard shuffling" - escaped the keen reporting skills of detectives who authored the report.