Sipping Truth and Doubt

This morning, as I sip on my coffee and birds trade gossip across the trees, I found myself refreshing my screen waiting for a verdict in the Karen Reed trial. For months, I’ve followed this case like a low hum in the background of my life. My introduction came through the Netflix docuseries and a few podcast episodes from Law & Crime Sidebar. While many are fixated on whether or not she’s guilty, my attention keeps drifting towards the dark, tangled roots beneath the surface.

This case has pulled back the curtain not only on the alleged crime, but on the system surrounding it namely, the Boston Police Department and the troubling culture of silence and self-preservation that seems to exist within it. It’s easy to shrug this off as a “Boston problem,” but I see a wider reflection: a nation wrestling with eroded trust in the institutions that are supposed to protect us.

Somewhere down my spiral, I landed on a fact I still can’t shake. Legally, the police have no obligation to protect individuals. Their duty is to enforce the law, not to shield us from harm. That truth was dissected beautifully in the Radiolab episode “No Special Duty,” and it stuck with me like a splinter under the skin.

I know the True Crime genre gets a bad rap. It's been called exploitative, voyeuristic, even unethical especially by those closest to the victims. And yes, it can be all of those things. But it can also be a tool for awareness, a catalyst for accountability. The rise of the True Crime genre has shown that the public craves transparency and when institutions fail, citizen sleuths will unite and solve the crimes that the police either cannot or will not.

True crime, at its best, doesn’t glorify horror. It confronts it. It pulls us in not because we’re bloodthirsty, but because we want to believe there’s still a line between right and wrong .

As the sun climbs higher and a slight mist falls, I keep refreshing, not just for the verdict but for a sign that the system still works. Or at the very least, that enough of us are paying attention when it doesn’t.