48. Interview with Jarvis Glassner: Part 1
[Jarvis Glassner has been a fire investigator with the Tallahassee Fire Department since 1992 and was on the scene during the investigation of the fire allegedly started by Earl Bishop and Anthony Stephens. Mr. Glassner is extremely enthusiastic to speak about his job and his experience both with this incident and within Tallahassee’s overall emergency response structure. Mr. Glassner works out of the primary police station in Tallahassee, where he sits in his office now, dabbing sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief]
11 October 2011; 13:23
– Twenty years I’ve been on the job. Past five of them years I spent turning down offers for everything from District Fire Chief to State Fire Marshall. I love Tallahassee. Love my job. Love the action. I refuse to sit at a desk filing papers into folders, sticking them in cabinets. To go out and face the media with some other field officer’s reports. Reports I could’ve very well gone out and made myself. I’ve got to be out here [Mr. Glassner points outside emphatically]—out there—digging through the leftovers. Finding the prints, whether that’s actual fingerprints or footprints or goddamn ass prints. These S-O-B’s always give themselves away at some point. It’s all in the details. One of my boys gives me a good enough description of the scene, I can tell you over the phone whether it’s arson or not, whether it’s accidental or purposeful. Heck, I could tell you if somebody was trying to make it look like a accident when it wasn’t. Can’t pull the wool over my eyes. It’s all in the training, basic to be exact…[1]
– Sure, sure. Just illustrating my point. I never been the type to sit in the background. I got too much sense to lay back and let somebody else fumble around with evidence. Half these men in here got the balls to do the job right when they’re told, but they don’t got the know how.
– The Bishop case now, hell. [Mr. Glassner chuckles and pats his knee lightly, looking around as if he wishes there were a larger audience] I knew that was arson soon as the call came in, moment they sounded the alarm for us to get out there. I’ve lived in this city my whole life. I been passing by them houses on Old Bainbridge almost every day since I was a boy riding in the back of my dad’s pickup.
– Them houses over there, they couldn’t set fire to themselves. Abandoned or not, them houses been standing for years, no problem. So, you see, things like what Bishop done, they just don’t happen coincidentally. And that’s where I come in. [Mr. Glassner leans in and lowers his voice, pointing his thumb back towards his chest] My job is to prove coincidences don’t exist.
[1] Mr. Glassner goes into a lengthy description of his enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corp. during Operation Desert Storm in the late eighties. Mr. Glassner is a former member of the first battalion/seventh marines group, which he proudly states was the first team into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and one of the only teams to enter into any type of military combat during the conflict.
Who Is Anthony Stephens? 
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