WEBCommentary(tm) - The Consequences Of Killing A Cop In America

What we seek to do in part two of cop killing is to explain the importance of not only the existence of a strong social bond between the police and the community, but a law abiding trust, and dependence, on the police department by the citizen when they choose not to bear arms. And this trust and dependence is seen by the criminal element as a vulnerability. And can use this weak position of the citizen to effect criminal acts against any person they seek to do harm. But when the citizen hates the institution of policing this can present difficulties, that can only hinder the officer's investigation. Even though the citizen may have been physically or financially wronged. And they too, as a result of their hate, may not care at all if cops are murdered by thugs.

In part two of the consequences of killing a cop we are going to take a look at an imaginary model, though hypothetically and perhaps for illustrative purposes only, nevertheless what we shall learn from this will help us to grasp the value of policing.

Lets create a model town. A small model town. One quite different from our TV series back in the sixties, Andy Of Mayberry RFD, where the town only had two peace officers, a sheriff and a deputy. But what we don't quite know is how many people live in Mayberry. We do know that for the most part everybody knew each other in the town of Mayberry. And that the crime rate was very low. In fact, the most exciting moment in Mayberry was the deputy, Barney Fife, giving someone a ticket, or hauling in Otis the town drunk for intoxication, and not to mention, Ernest T. Bass for rock throwing.

Mayberry could not be used to represent the type of problems we face in 2009. It's model of the perfect society is so illusory that it would never serve as a standard for today. There is nothing to draw from for anyone. Even economic problems seemed to be almost foreign to the town. It is true that Mayberry considered itself detached from the rest of the world but still all micro-communities are just microcosms of larger communities with the same problems or similar ones.

No... what we need to do is to look elsewhere for a model town that will reflect today's social conflicts as they are, and have been for the past 30 years. So since I could not literally find a small model to use to help us apprehend the need for local police I decided to create my own. This model is not in the least perfect nor is it real. It is however able to help us achieve our objectives.

Lets call this town, Good Town. Now Good Town consist of ten families plus three police families for a total of thirteen. And for the sake of clarity we will exclude everything that a town normally is made up of but just the people and the law. Good Town has three law enforcement officers. John Doe, married, Jack Smith, single, and Jill Jones, engaged. A ratio of four and one third average size families for every one cop. And these three local officers are responsible for the whole town. The families by the way have not had any crime for over three consecutive years. But this will soon change. Moreover, the cops have to cover an area of a mile and a half radius to complete a patrol. Good Town's most exciting time has been high school fights with children over prom nights. Or bicycle stealing... Or an occasional domestic violence for the kid’s Christmas presents. Other than that Good Town is a good town.

But one day Drug Gang-A moves into the neighborhood. On the East side of Good Town. It discovers after taking a survey at the local high school that they are unchallenged in drug distribution in the community. Thereafter they begin corrupting the youth with drugs. Months go by until things begin to worsen. Family One has been having trouble with their daughter not going to school and staying out late at night.

Several other families report the same or similar problems with their kids. But this is not necessarily breaking the law.

Next, a Pedophile moves into Good Town looking for fresh meat. As time goes by he sets his sights on Family Seven. They have five children. One is a little boy only five years old and likes to play on the outside of the yard on the sidewalk without any supervision. Let me remind you that Good Town has not had any crime for the past three years and parents subsequently had very little fear of allowing their children to go unsupervised during playtime.

Now lets stop for a moment and assess the threat to Good Town's safety at this point. We can posit there are two major threats to the safety of the town. 1) Drug Gang-A, and 2) A dangerous Pedophile.

The local police, officer Doe, Jones and Smith are not Mayberry types. That is to say, Ticket- writers, or Drunk-haulers, or Rock-catchers. They are very serious and professionally trained police persons capable of dealing with the times and their changes. Though, up to this point we have heard or seen little response from them, that is because there has been little crime committed, and very little need to arrest anyone for anything. But that is soon to change for certain.

Drug Gang-A has a monopoly on the price of a high. And because of this their prices keep rising. One night two 13 year old males from Family Four meet up with Drug Gang-A members to do a drug deal on the school courtyard behind the building. A neighbor spots them and calls police. Officer Doe takes the call and responds. But these drug boys are not boys. They are over 21 and armed to the teeth, and there are three of them.

Officer Doe parks his car on the opposite side of the school and decides to out flank the drug dealers and spring the element of surprise on them. But as he approaches in the dark to their right, one of the drug boys has decided to check out the area to make sure that they are not being put in any danger. He spots the police car on the far side of the school building and hurries back to alert the others. In doing so officer Doe moves in to make the arrest, but in executing the element of surprise a gun battle breaks out. The two young boys scatter and the drug boys shoot it out with officer Doe, who is shot fatally in the exchange. One of the drug boys is hit, but all three get away.

Now we are down to two local police officers to cover the thirteen families including their own. And the ratio is now six and a half average size families for each cop. Redistributing the safety burden of the town by half.

Since a replacement for officer Doe will take some time to complete, officer Jones and Smith must take care of the town themselves. Remember this is not what would happen in real life. And that is not the point we are attempting to make with our model. Because, in real life several back-ups would have been on the scene before the gun battle on the school courtyard ever got started.

A short while later, another gang moves into Good Town looking for prospects to hook, Drug Gang-B. They target the West-side of town. Now Drug Gang-A has competition. Also, an affair occurred in Family Six and Family Eight and the husband in family eight killed the husband in family six, and officer Jones makes the arrest. But underlying all this two of the children from Family Eight has run away from home.

Clearly we can begin to see the effects or the consequences of the loss of officer Doe. The burden now on officer Smith and Jones has increased substantially. That is to say, they must now divide the 33 1/3 percent of police provided protection that officer Doe provided among themselves, until his replacement arrives. Meantime, crime and the threat of crime continues to grow with little abatement.

Drug Gang-A finds out through their customers that Drug Gang-B has been selling them drugs at a lower price, and therefore would rather trade with Drug Gang-B. Drug Gang-A declares war on Drug Gang-B as a result.

One rainy night Drug Gang-A, calls a meeting with Drug Gang-B, to square differences, and instead, to collude, by joining forces to keep the price of drugs in the town high for the sake of profits. But Drug Gang-B's economist and accountant tells them why do that when they can have it all, and the meeting breaks up.

What happened next is a call came in from a child's parents alerting local police that a Pedophile had stolen their child while playing on the sidewalk. Officer Jones responds and attempts to track down the whereabouts of the child. On the outskirts of the town officer Jill Jones finds the child in the woods unclothed and strangled and just by chance spots a man darting past her vehicle and sets out in pursuit. But this Pedophile is armed. And stops to exchange gunfire with the officer. Because the officer had little cover in pursuit of the Pedophile she is severely wounded, and subsequently had to be hospitalized for six months.

Now Good Town is down to one local officer with a steady rise in crime, and the Pedophile is still on the loose.

What does this mean. Well, 66 2/3 percent of police protection is down. Officer Jack Smith has to do the job of two people besides himself now. And the replacement for officer Doe is still on hold.

So what does the situation look like now? Well... lets see, we have two drug gangs entrenched in a drug war. Our Pedophile is still on the prowl for little children. Family Six and Eight are at war over the sexual affair between the parents. The two run-a-ways are still on the run. It is clear that officer Jack Smith is unable to spread himself around enough to satisfy the entire town when it comes to comprehensive police protection. Something has to be done and right away. He now has to protect and serve thirteen families instead of four and a third starting out.

Moreover, the unemployment rate rises, and five new immigrant families moves into Good Town...

This brief example of a town in crisis in terms of rising crime and decreasing police protection, due to service rendered, points out with some affirmation what the police means to the citizenry. Oh sure, the town's people in the real world, because we have a second amendment granting US citizens the right to bear arms, probably have weapons of their own. And maybe are expert marksmen. You never know. But there are people in the real world who prefer not to have weapons in their homes due to children. They would prefer to rely on police protection to remedy any potential crime that may threaten the sanctity of their home. And to avoid direct interaction including their children with the criminal element or the crime itself.

What our model proves on paper at least is that the percentages of police protection was cut drastically as each police officer's career was cut short by physical interaction with criminals.

Couldn't you see how economics were playing a role in the rise of the crime rate in Good Town? How morality seemed at first to be driving Good Town into future prosperity? But suddenly when drugs entered the picture things began to change. The structure of the family began to break down. The threat to the town's safety as well as to the safety of its local police began to wean. Suddenly the cost of safety could be seen for what it's worth. And this, though not a direct correlation, saw the values of the community plummet. Can we rationally conclude that drugs were the reason for the blight of Good Town? No we cannot. There were affairs and family feuds occurring without the aid of drugs. What we learn to understand is that you don't need any external forces acting to spur conflict among family members or between families, because this social conflict paradigm is inherent in society itself. What this means is that crime at some level will always exist among people. And as such just like in Mayberry and Good Town in the real world we shall always need the aid of police protection or some form of policing to minimize the threat of crime and contain it if possible.

So are they valuable? Yes. Should we worry when a cop is killed by criminals? Yes. Even though we have the right to bear arms. We should still worry. And as cities all over the country and throughout the world grow, so grows the potential for crime. With the rise in the crime rate in Good Town and the decline in police protection, officer Jack Smith had no chance in hell of curbing all the crime going on in Good Town. He would have ultimately been eliminated by the thugs. And then you would have Anarchy, but a bold chance to use your weapons to fight the bad guys on your own turf, unless the state government declares Marshall Law, and moves in the national guard to stabilize things. Otherwise it's all out war in Good Town.

Can you see where this is leading? That's right, to the end of Good Town. Remember, the state has a compelling interest in its own survival, and police are the tools to see that it achieves its objective. Good Town is not the state, but a town within the state, but is as important as the state, however the state is a larger institution that depends on Good Town for tax revenue, so Good Town has a compelling interest too. But the police are employees of Good Town.

Though Good Town is impractical it is still in terms of a model, exemplary of a clear perspective on rising crime and evinces how cops must sometimes spread themselves around. The fact that one cop arrives on the scene first before others is not unrealistic. This does happen. It just depends on the call and who's in the vicinity at the time. Although it wasn't mentioned above it will be mentioned now that cops have an afterlife. That is, they don't work 24 hours a day at the job. They go home and recuperate, the married and the unmarried.

In Good Town officer Jack Smith cannot leave the job in this theoretical model. He must remain on duty because the rise in crime is pervasive, and mainly because there is no one to replace him. That is not likely to be an occurrence in today's real world. But just the thought of such an anomaly chills the blood of the law abiding citizen. And what about lunch and his two fifteen minute breaks to just relax? The best thing that officer Smith could do would be to deputize some of the town's people as last resort. But such an act has to have authorization from the Mayor, or city council depending on how the local government is politically structured. [http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Fenty-gives- police-power-to-deputize-citizens-41405167.html] It is believed that situations still exist today that mirror such a dilemma as the one Good Town faced by and large. And as we can plainly see the chief of police is missing in Good Town too.

Rural towns in America, where the population is below 1000 inhabitants, and the numbers of police officers are moderate, are vulnerable to attack from the drug dealers. Especially when the employment rate is high in those areas, and the population is multicultural. The prior statement does not imply that some ethnic groups are attractors of drug trafficking and others are not. What is meant is that the more diverse the rural community the easier it is for drug traffickers to recruit the less fortunate, while at the same time setting up a buy and sell and distribution strategy to generate demand. That is to say, a black drug gang would not blend in with an all white rural community.

Good Town as we learned in the end was growing. Immigrants were moving in but on the flip side of things we saw a rise in unemployment too. With the one deceased cop, John Doe, married, and officer Jill Jones, engaged, hospitalized and in recovery for six months this pattern could only spell trouble for the future.

Here in Cincinnati we asked the Chief Colonel Thomas H. Streicher, Jr. of the Cincinnati police department four very important questions about the life of a police officer when off-duty. Unfortunately Sergeant Phillip N. Buccino, at District One was supposed to contact me about the information, but apparently was unable to do so. And I imagine Chief Streicher was unable too. Their input would have made all the difference, but with a look at our model it is believed the reader has a fair understanding of what cop killing means. It is simply bad public relations.

For a good reference to the social conflicts of what misunderstandings between law enforcement and the people can create, read the accounts of 'the black militant group: Move' in Philadelphia in the 1970s, or Randy and Vicky Weaver at Ruby Ridge Idaho, or Waco, and David Koresh, The Branch Dividians in Texas in 1993, and The Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh in 1995. You can go to the library and borrow the videos on these cases and learn how such events caused dissension and misinterpretation between law enforcement at all levels and Americans everywhere.

In addition to writing commentaries, poetry and novels, I am one half of the macbrothers, Inc. We are songwriters and not artists or performers. We write music for others to perform or record. I do not do tours since I am not an artist. Like I said, we write & record our own songs and release them for purchase online. However, we are interested in nonprofessional or professional artists seeking songs. If you are an artist interested in songs for your album please email me. I will send you the demo and lyrics (and any changes to the lyrics), or you can listen online to our songs readily.