They Killed Themselves!

As someone may have noted from my “above the law” addition to my photos link, a Metro officer is being laid to rest today. I’m sure with the assistance of Metro’s administration the media is hyping this as a hero’s funeral that is drawing brothers and sisters in blue from around the city, state, and nation. I guess that’s just protocol when someone wearing a badge dies in the line of duty, but the pending investigation will (this is an educated guess on my part) reveal that the officer basically killed himself. This is the second “suicide” by a Metro officer since last May. Both were driving recklessly. Neither had been dispatched. Both were traveling at excessively high speeds while purportedly trying to provide assistance to other officers. I suppose I’m being less than sympathetic. When the first officer was buried, I had to argue with Metro officers to gain admission to my own home. After all, this is the entertainment capital of the world and Metro puts on a grand show, blockading thoroughfares for miles to parade the deceased from church to cemetery. I’ve been behind the wheel of a squad car. I know what it’s like to start rolling to provide assistance to, in the case of a county, officers who were literally miles away from my location. I also know that it is extremely difficult to roll a squad car, as in the most recent incident. I could tell by looking at the television pictures of the first incident that the driver had been traveling at an insanely high rate of speed (the subsequent investigation revealed in excess of 100 miles per hour going through an intersection posted for 45 mph. No lights. No siren. Only a hapless civilian that got in the way of a one-ton bullet (fortunately, that driver was not killed). I doubt that law enforcement could find any more sympathetic supporter than me when it’s behaving within the parameters of the law that it is sworn to uphold. But don’t expect me to shed any tears, and not to be offended by the hypocrisy of a supposed hero’s funeral, when the truth is that these men put many lives at risk and suffered the consequence of losing their own.