Police should be more forthcoming

Sunday's lead headline was the inevitable result of the coalescence of five horrific events: "Tragedy and loss."

Four teenagers die in a car crash in Burlington Township west of Elgin when one car apparently crosses the centerline and strikes another. The three occupants of the car that crossed the line and the lone occupant of the other all perish.

Two young men are shot, a 16-year-old killed, during a fight outside a house party in Elgin.

A 70-year-old Elk Grove Village woman is found beaten to death in the basement of her home.

A decorated Schaumburg cop dies of a heart attack after chasing and struggling with a man who had been kicked out of a bar.

And three women are badly injured when one car turns left in the path of another in Algonquin.

All of this on the heels of a day in which a 20-year-old woman is shot several times in Elgin and is clinging to life, and another woman is killed - her husband and young son injured - when their vehicle is crushed between a state work truck and a gravel truck in Huntley.

The losses of life and uncertainty for the future is paralyzing to family members and friends. We grieve along with them.

The collective misery caused by all this is certainly greater than the sum of the five tragedies. It casts a pall over people who knew nothing of any of the victims.

These catastrophic events hit Elgin very hard.

The Elgin Police Department, which has developed a reputation of being sparing in its timely disclosure of information that other departments don't seem to have a problem sharing, would not say word one about the arrest of a man in connection with the shooting of the 20-year-old woman. Yet charges had already been read in bond court and the man was booked into jail.

Elk Grove Village police, too, weren't forthcoming with the identity of their suspect. His name was not revealed until he showed up in bond court Tuesday.

We understand a police department's goal is to investigate crimes and bring to justice any and all involved parties. That goal sometimes puts it at odds with newsgathering operations that post news on the Internet all day long.

But to not alert the public at minimum that they'd made arrests in these two cases only prolongs the fear in the neighborhood that a killer is still on the loose. In Elgin's case, a neighborhood whose residents have seen more than their share of violence and are on edge.

Elgin police, too, refused to identify 16-year-old Jaime Benitez as the young man shot in the back and killed outside the party.

Why? His age should play no factor in the decision. Disclosure of his name could bring him no further harm. The department did release his name Monday night, long after news organizations had already gotten it elsewhere and just 14 hours before the start of his funeral.

If a police department's primary job is to keep the peace, a little more forthrightness would go a long way toward maintaining peace of mind.