Scared Cops = a High Body Count of Innocent Lives.

What happened in Washington was awful. But those people did not die without being shown a huge amount of sorrow and sympathy towards their families. As Mark A Clements put it best, “All cops are good cops when they die”. I am sure if Harvey Keitel’s character in Bad Lieutenant were real, even he would have been memorialized.

The news did not make a huge issue of it, but the female cop, Linda Griswold, had actually had a pretty good body count herself during her time on the planet. She had killed several people, and was able to justify her actions through being a police officer. Did that make her death right? Probably not. But maybe if the God that everyone keeps telling about me is real and actually exists, there might just be justice in the world after all. Karma was served.

I feel that human life is sacred and our society has devaluated it more and more with each passing year. Linda showed this herself through her actions. It has been said time and again she was very aggressive and would use violence and force any time she was able to justify it. Others will ask, “What about the other three?” I will say that it is still tragic. But in a case where someone is shot incorrectly by the police; if they are close to an assailant that is posing a threat to the police their death is deemed justified and the officers are not punished. This is even true in the case of children. (I may get flack for this one. But if you do not believe me, fine. Look up some cases yourself. You will see firsthand what I mean; some were rather high profile investigations.) Maybe these other officers were just in the way, and in the wrong place, for a rogue servant of God.

Was God simply doing justice that could not be served in a court room? Maybe… When the plagues came down upon Egypt, not everyone who lived there was guilty of the Pharaoh’s sins. But they suffered more cruelly than the royalty did just for living in that country during his misdeeds.

This should also turn our attention to the fact that now police are more scared than ever. The Kansas City Star reported that one office said, “He was scrutinizing every one he saw walk in and out of the convenience store he went into grab a Mountain Dew that morning”. The Seattle Times reported that a police chief said, “Now police see why it is so dangerous to work in the community.” As if any one (or all) of us have a hatred for police so volatile that we will just walk up to one and kill it.

Have we forgotten what a police officer gets for their work? A rookie cop gets $50,000 a year, some of the best health care in America, bonuses, major training, gets armed to the teeth, and has armor provided for them. Even when people say, “They rush in when everyone else is running out,” one must realize that they are not going in like some average person. They go in as protected as any one can be. In situations where “They are rushing in while everyone else is running out” they almost never die. Even when one is shot it is only a superficial flesh wound.

It really looks as though we as artists and political activists will be the ones who should be scared now. We have already seen what these Fascists do, when they are not openly scared, to those who speak their minds or wish to not look like the rest of the sheep in the flock. I know I had a state trooper put a gun to my head when he stopped me for “A plastic cover over my license plate” when I knew full well it was the political sticker I had on my car that stated that I felt George Bush was “An American Errorist”. All that happened in Washington was give police an excuse to be even more violent than ever before. I will promise you that we will see an increased body count at the hands of the police. But the saddest part of all is that these innocent Americans will not have millions looking for justice in their deaths.