Saturday, March 21, 2009

Cop-Killing In Oakland For Fun And Profit

Everyone knows by now that a friendly neighborhood "ex"-con here in Oakland shot and killed three veteran police officers today.

The swat team did apparently track down and kill the responsible party -- a positive development, but too little too late for our city. I will not list the dead cretin's name, but suffice it to say that he will not be missed.

On behalf of the reasonable citizens of Oakland, let me extend thanks, condolences and outrage to our dead officers: Sgts. Erv Romans, Dan Sakai and Mark Dunakin. Let it be known that there are ordinary Oaklanders who will mourn these officers and would like to clean up the streets if only we had the leadership and direction to do so.



In a place like Oakland, there is no way to discuss this story without reference to the young man killed by a Bart police officer at the beginning of the year. No one will soon forget the public outrage and rioting which followed that slaying, which ironically saw the same actors playing opposite parts -- an ex-con killed by a cop.

Neither will we soon forget that the first response to today's incident by the residents of the eastern part of our fair city was to heckle the officers who arrived to investigate the murder of two of their bretheren.

And never mind the fact that the two shot officers had to wait for someone to call 911 and for an ambulance to come transport them to the hospital. What, do east Oaklanders not own cars? Is not a single one of them capable of scooping up a shot cop and racing to the hospital?

No, I suppose all we can expect from denizens of these neighborhoods is a phone call, if we're lucky, and then the predictable middle finger from the squalid street-corner dwellers whose only defining characteristic seems to be their contempt for society.

Honestly, I'm amazed at the decorum of the police department following this act of evil. It would be only natural, in my opinion, to strap on the jack-boots and start knocking down doors in the wake of this atrocity.

Were I an officer, I'd have brutality on my mind. I'd want to transform my holding cells into a mini Abu Ghraib.

But no one will act on such an impulse -- that much you can count on. Our public servants may be overpaid, in this blogger's opinion, but they are a professional bunch, and I know they will handle this situation with the decorum befitting their position.

The same cannot be said for our citizenry -- pock-marked as it is with robbers, theives, pimps and murderers. There will be no candlelight vigils for these fine policemen. John Burris will not lift even one of his bejewelled fingers to help right the wrong that has been committed here. No car windows will be broken, no tear-gas will be deployed.

Oakland will fail to mourn this tragedy, because this is exactly what our citizens expect. We expect our police officers to die. We construct rules and regulations which are nearly impossible to follow, and when an officer fails in his duty, we dust off our signboards and slogans and take to the streets.

So there you have it. This is our Oakland, a lawless Terrordome whose residents would rather pursue ridiculous Leftist ideology than save lives.

What should we do instead?

For a start, how about mourning these fine men in proper fashion. How about a focus on enforcement, not this ridiculous notion of "community" policing.

Our city should adopt a new policing slogan: "Not in my city." Policing, and the police department, should be expanded with a sole focus on eliminating troublemakers through rigorous enforcement of all the laws on the book. We need either to lock these people up or run them out of our city.

But most of all, we need not to stop this pointless activism aimed at proving the police are "brutal." If anything, this incident proves that they are not brutal enough.

When criminals in your city feel they can pull out a gun and murder three cops, you have a serious problem requiring serious action.

Something needs to change. Enough is enough.