Can money buy off police scrutiny?
Imagine an accident scene. Police arrive at 2:30 a.m. to find a car that just pulled out of driveway badly damaged from colliding with a fireplug and a tree.
The driver, a woman, is sprawled in semi-consciousness on the ground with cuts on her face more likely caused by a human hand than the steering wheel. There is no blood in the car and the air bag did not deploy. A man, the woman's husband, is at the scene with a golf club. The back window of the car is smashed in from the instrument. The man tells police his wife took the car out for a drive and he rushed out with the golf club to assist extricating her from the smashed car by breaking out the back window when he heard the collision.
It wouldn't take a police academy graduate to surmise the police would quickly take the husband in for questioning on two possible felonies: spousal assault and reckless endangerment causing a vehicle accident, while carting the wife off to the emergency room.
If Erin Nordegren (Mrs. Tiger Woods) fills the role of our imagined possible felon, then it sure helps she is married to one of the most famous celebrities in the world who also happens to be headed to billionaire status. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure can buy immunity from police inquiry.
Walt Zlotow
Glen Ellyn