Back in the good old crack days of the 1990s in upper Manhattan, murders were commonplace. There were lots of murders, whether dealers shooting over street corners or users whacking old ladies over the head for their next vial.  Not a day went by when there weren’t murders, and some days made Washington Heights look like the OK Corral.  

And in response, police geared up for war. It had to stop, we were told, And they were right. It was bad.

If everyone can take five from fighting over the elimination of guns and institutionalizing anyone who wears stripes with plaids, there’s a bit of news.  From the New York Times :

Murders in New York have dropped to their lowest level in over 40 years, city officials announced on Friday, even as overall crimes increased slightly because of a rise in thefts — a phenomenon based solely on robberies of iPhones and other Apple devices.

There were 414 recorded homicides so far in 2012, compared with 515 for the same period in 2011, city officials said. That is a striking decline from murder totals in the low-2,000s that were common in the early 1990s, and is also below the record low: 471, set in 2009.

Four hundred and fourteen murders in New York in 2012. And 14 of those didn’t happen in 2012, but were from earlier years but added in as they were now classified as murders. So the real number is 400. Not to suggest that any murder is inconsequential, but there was a war on murder, it’s been won. Even Mayor Bloomberg says so.

“The essence of civilization is that you can walk down the street without having to look over your shoulder,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.

A nice sentiment, but not entirely accurate.

He attributed the low murder rate to the department’s controversial practice of “stop, question and frisk,” in which people are stopped on the street and questioned by officers, and aggressive hot-spot policing, in which officers are deployed to areas with crime spikes.

So people still have to look over their shoulder, but not for fear of the murderer lurking behind them, but the cop.

When staring into a void, it’s easy to claim it’s because of whatever governmental initiatives are in place at the moment.  Stop and frisk, where about 700,000 people are stopped, because a police officer decided to do so, resulting in the seizure of a grand total 780 guns (do the math), was justified by the need to rid the streets of guns, and ridding the streets of guns was justified to stop the epidemic of killings. 

While basic logic reminds us that correlation does not prove causation, let’s allow Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly their moment in the sun. They did it. Hooray. The number of murders is the lowest since 1963, when the reliability of crime stats were improved. It may be longer.  We should build a statue of these guys, they did such a fabulous job.

But it’s done. They did it, and now it’s done.  Yet the “essence of civilization” remains elusive for New Yorkers, not because of the lack of crime but the extreme tactics of the police. 

Cries following recent events to rid our world of weapons are being heard far and wide, as justification for yet another war and eradication of rights.  It has to be done, proponents say, because it is unacceptable that bad things happen.  Alarms are going off across the nation, and Mayor Bloomberg is among the loudest voices demanding a gunless world. 

Yet there were only 400 murders in New York.

One argument in favor of maintaining the status quo is to point to this significant success and contend that by going back to the days when police weren’t armed for war and empowered to stop anyone, anytime on a whim, we risk a return to the days when 2000 or more murders a year were the norm.  It’s not a good argument for anyone remotely knowledgeable about the streets of the City, but to those inclined to adore fear, it might suffice.

Fortunately, the Mayor doesn’t have to rely on logical fallacies to maintain a standing army in Manhattan, larger and better armed than small nations, and given sweeping powers that would make marshall law seem pointless.  He has the outlier, the freak tragedy, that saddens our front page.  “See,” law enforcement sycophants scream.  “Do you want 20 first graders murdered in Newtown? Do you?” 

No. Of course not, but then I also don’t want 700,000 people, including the  occasional judge and city councilman, to forfeit their constitutional rights either.   I embrace the good mayor’s words, that the essence of civilization is to be able to walk down the street without looking over one’s shoulder.  Whether that refers to criminals or cops doesn’t matter.  

There were only 400 murders in New York this year, and yet we still can’t walk down the street without looking over our shoulder because of the police.  That is not the essence of civilization, but a tactic that was wrong before and wholly unjustified now.  It’s time to silence the alarm.

Among the many unwritten rules of the job is the courtesy one cop shows another. The perk was that cops could ignore the “minor” rules, driving faster than others, getting a cup of joe and a donut from an appreciative shopkeeper, parking where only disabled people are allowed, give way. After all, they protect us from criminals, and shouldn’t they be allowed a bit leeway? Don’t they deserve a break?

In 2011, Florida Trooper Donna “Jane” Watts broke the rules.  From the Sun-Sentinel :

Watts made national news in October 2011 when she pulled over off-duty Miami Police Officer Fausto Lopez for speeding in his marked patrol car on Florida’s Turnpike in Broward County.

She followed him for seven minutes and later wrote in a report that he was darting in and out of lanes at speeds exceeding 120 mph. She approached his cruiser with her gun drawn, yelling, and then handcuffed him.

Lopez, who regularly averaged more than 100 mph on his drive between Miami and his home in Coconut Creek, was fired in September.

When Watts pulled over Lopez, the incident was caught on the trooper’s dashboard camera. “This is not a first-time occurrence with y’all,” Watts told Lopez after pulling him over. “Y’all come from that way all the time, this Miami police car, and we never catch it.”

Lopez apologized and tried to explain he was running late. “With all due respect …,” he said, but Watts cut him off. “You don’t respect me, sir,” she said. “You don’t respect these people out here.”

Watts began opening her mailbox from the side instead of from the front in case there was something in it.

The suit states that Watts’ supervisors “do not believe that it would ever be safe for her to return to road patrol” and that Watts believes if she ever need police backup in an emergency, it would not be provided. More than a dozen troopers from her own agency also looked up her personal information.

The drones are coming to a neighborhood near you.

As the  New York Times editorial says, it’s no longer a matter of if, but when.

Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to quickly select six domestic sites to test the safety of drones, which can vary in size from remote-controlled planes as big as jetliners to camera-toting hoverers called Nano Hummingbirds that weigh 19 grams.

The drone go-ahead, signed in February by President Obama in the F.A.A. reauthorization law, envisions a $5 billion-plus industry of camera drones being used for all sorts of purposes from real estate advertising to crop dusting to environmental monitoring and police work.

There are many excellent uses for drones, ranging from search and rescue to providing a capability of an eye in the sky over large stretches of border.  But then, there are uses that are less savory, from law enforcement surveillance to killing.

As is invariably the case, the argument in favor of drones, at least domestically, elevates its good uses over the ones people would find unacceptable, with the government promising the latter won’t happen because it will make rules, maybe even pass laws, that forbid uses that we might find unpalatable at the dawn of the drone age.  Those inclined to believe will sigh in relief. 

One of my inspirational muses, Radley Balko has spent the last year writing a book on the militarization of American law enforcement, which will be available next summer. called Rise of the Warrior Cop.  Though I haven’t read it, I surmise based on Radley’s writings that a core message is that if we put the accoutrements of war in the hands of the police, they will use them.  We can explain the need for tanks and heavy armaments by pointing at the ability to thwart a terrorist takeover of Des Moines, but once they have custom fitted SWAT gear, it will be used at the slightest provocation. Or photo ops.

There will no doubt be times when a drone will appear to be the best choice to deal with a situation which, from the perspective of law enforcement to fulfill a mission unhampered by legal niceties and concern for collateral damage.  No commanding officer will say “let the victim die because there are regulations that say we are not allowed to use a drone for this purpose.”  And when the victim is saved, America will applaud.

And the next time, there will be no victim, but a man the cops believe is very bad, and the drone will protect police from any potential harm in getting this very bad man.  After its successful use, and the press conference where the chief tearfully announces that no police officer died in the apprehension of this very bad man, America will applaud.

And drones will become a part of our life, just as SWAT teams have become a part of our life.  Except they were once only called upon for the most extreme and dangerous of situations, and now they show up to break down door when someone is thought to be smoking pot inside. 

The New York Times anticipates the slippery slope, and offers its solution:

Responding to growing concern as the public discovers drones are on the horizon, the agency recently and quite sensibly added the issue of citizens’ privacy to its agenda. Setting regulations under the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unlawful search is of the utmost importance. But since the F.A.A.’s primary mission is safety, Congress should take the matter in hand by writing privacy safeguards for the booming drone industry.

Certainly agency regulation is inadequate to ensure that interests contrary to the convenience of the government are honored. Regulations change all the time. Regulations are ignored, giving rise to a commission and investigation that, years later, admonish the offending entity and direct it to never violate the regulations again. 

But is Congress a better answer?  After Senator Patrick Leahy  scuttled the warrant requirement for online communications when law enforcement whined that it would force them to work harder, the message is clear.  Congress can no more be trusted with assuring the preservation of our rights than the FAA. Or your local police. Our last line of defense would be the Supreme Court’s refusal to frame a drone exception, but that won’t bring comfort to many.

That drones can, and no doubt will, serve extremely useful, socially acceptable purposes is not in doubt. It’s that the government, once the technology is in place, won’t use it for improper purposes as well.  To ask the public to trust them, to believe that they would never use it improperly, is to ask too much. 

The government has demonstrated at every turn that it cannot control the impulse to use any tool available for purposes beyond the approved scope. And Americans, with short memories and emotionally charged willingness to overlook the government’s trespasses, will applaud.

The idea of watchful drones buzzing overhead like Orwellian gnats may seem far-fetched to some. But Congress, in its enthusiasm for a new industry, should guarantee the strongest protection of privacy under what promises to be a galaxy of new eyes in the sky.

It’s hardly far-fetched, as the technology is readily available. What is far-fetched is the New York Times’ naive hope that the government can restrain itself from abusing this technology as it did the last.  The only way to “guarantee the strongest protection of privacy” is to not give government the tools to violate it.  Once they have them, they will use them. 

Senator Patrick Leahy was the hero of the great unwashed, those of us who exist in a world where email and internet are a part of our everyday life, and the idea that we weren’t feeding it straight into the belly of law enforcement was our boldest dream.  And then he wasn’t.

At Overlawyered, Walter Olson sees the curiosity of the post Newtown massacre debate much as I do.  On twitter, he coins a great word, blamestorming :

Who to blame after a freak atrocity? For many of those who’ve felt obliged to comment, the question seems rather who not to blame.

After the Sandy Hook school shooting, as well as after other shootings, those of us who are skeptical about gun controls are often asked: So what are we suggesting should be done about the shootings? If we’re not suggesting gun controls (as opposed to proposals such as allowing teachers to be armed, increased concealed carry rights outside schools, providing school guards, and the like), the argument goes, we’re not taking gun tragedies seriously.

Now I generally don’t support the “don’t just stand there, do something” school of criminal law. When all the proposals seem likely not to work, or do more harm than good, implementing one of them for the sake of “doing something” strikes me as a mistake.

Nothing?  That’s it?  If there is no magic bullet (get it?) solution to such tragedies, we throw up out hands and walk away?

But let me offer a concrete analogy (recognizing that, as with all analogies, it’s analogous and not identical). Every day, about 30 to 35 people are killed in the U.S. in gun homicides or gun accidents (not counting gun suicides or self-inflicted accidental shootings). And every day, likely about 30 to 35 people are killed in homicides where the killer was under the influence of alcohol, or in alcohol-related drunk driving accidents…

So what are we going to do about it? When are we going to ban alcohol? When are we going to institute more common-sense alcohol control measures?

Well, we tried, and the conventional wisdom is that the cure was worse than the disease — which is why we went back to a system where alcohol is pretty freely available, despite the harm it causes.

So his solution to the murder of 20 children is to ban alcohol?  No, you dolt. Eugene is drawing an analogy to show the hypocrisy of our concern over the deaths of children and the failure of prohibition.  His solution, thus, is to not ban guns. See what he did there?

We should certainly consider proposals that aim to ameliorate the problem, and weigh their costs and benefits. But we should not presume that there’s somehow a moral imperative to Do Something. In fact, there’s a moral imperative not to do something that’s likely to make matters worse.

As one who regularly cautions against knee-jerk, simplistic responses to tragedy, I can well appreciate Eugene’s message.  But then, there is this nagging sense that the discussion has little to do with coming up with rational changes that might alleviate the potential for “freak atrocities” so that nobody messes with stuff we like to do. 

Though I’m not a gun guy, and have no interest whatsoever of packing heat as I stroll down the street, and have no desire to have others strolling down the street with their weapon strapped to their ankle just in case, the arguments proffered by those who disagree with me are not unreasonable or unsupported.  One of the most difficult point raised is that, given the Heller decision, the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental, personal right. 

Whether I could have slept just as well at night had the Supreme Court come out the other way on Heller, I very much appreciate the fact that the right is established in law, and that I cannot rationally promote respect for only those constitutional amendments I like while advocating against those that didn’t match my personal tastes,  Hooray for the first, fourth, fifth and sixth, but screw the second?  If I took that position, I would be shooting blanks.  For those who adore the second but couldn’t care less about the others, the same it true.

Yet, none of this leads to anything remotely suggesting something worth doing. While I can understand and appreciate Eugene’s admonition not to make matters worse, I hesitate to believe that we’ve exhausted all rational thinking and have reached the point where we throw up our hands and walk away.  Sure, there are crazies making loud, stupid noises all over the place.  Plenty of gun guys are cringing at the mere mention of Wayne LaPierre, who has brought more embarrassment on gun ownership than Jim Brady.

But we’re no closer to a worthwhile discussion of things that can be done to improve safety without sacrificing rights or making things worse.  It’s not because there is no fix, no tweak, no limitation that can make things better, but that too many of the thoughtful people, like Eugene Volokh, are spending all their time and capital shifting blame away from their beloved sacred cows.

Unless and until we start to consider things that can be done, nothing will change. It’s possible that nothing should change, but we can only know that after all the screaming and blaming stops, and people start putting their efforts toward something more useful than marshalling the arguments to save their favorite things.

At PrawfsBlawg, Northwestern Law Dean Dan Rodriguez has been offering his insight on the future of law school from his thoroughly modern dean chair.  In his latest missive, he drops a dime.

As reformists and irritants likewise insist, we are going to increase our expectations of full-time faculty members in order to realize cost savings and take our foots off the tution (sic) pedal.  Market pressures make the exhortation “pay the bastards less” ring rather hollow — and all the shouting and screeching from the disgruntled won’t make it otherwise.  Salaries for incumbents will remain more or less where they are (albeit with rarer raises).  Faculty hiring is what will take the hit.  In this environment, law schools will be asked to do more with less.

Refusing to succumb to the screeching of “irritants” who don’t appreciate the  awesomeness of scholars, Rodriguez nonetheless gives the bad news of how law schools, the profit centers of academia, will demand that lawprofs hereinafter work for a living.

His first new demand of the professoriate is (hold on to your hats, now), that they will have to . . . teach.

Teaching regularly and well and with sufficient accomodation (sic) to institutional needs, as these needs evolve in this new and difficult era.  Deans, including this one, will be reticent to enter into permanent teaching reduction agreements.  Scheduling will need to follow the imperative of student learning and sensible organizational management, not principally the convenience of full-time faculty members.  Faculty leaves, whatever the reason and whatever past practice, should be discretionary and timed around the needs of the school and its learning environment.  And teaching must be excellent — sophisticated in content, coherent in expression, up-to-date, and connected increasingly to the essential project of making our students into first-rate young lawyers;

What law student doesn’t want to be turned into a “first-rate young lawyer”?  Especially older students, who would be happy to be turned into a “young” anything, but that’s besides the point. The gist is that lawprofs will no longer be allowed to dictate permanent teaching reduction agreements to suit their convenience, but instead by expected to teach the courses the school needs taught.

That means that some poor schmuck is going to have to teach professional responsibility, even though they have no interest in teaching anything other than Con Law (everybody wants to teach Con Law, only using different amendments) and Law and Nietzsche.  Some baby lawprof is going to get Evidence rammed down his throat and he can take it or get a real job. Bummer.

It’s unclear what Rodriguez means by “teaching must be excellent.”  Does this reflect a break from the past where teaching sucked?  Does this mean that law schools will no longer be tolerant of scholars, wholly disinterested in wiping snotty noses, wasting semesters by regaling their students with their pet theories or personal peccadilloes?  What makes this confusing is that Rodriguez, according to his bio, never practiced law. Aside from a year clerking for 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, his every paycheck came from academia.  How then, one wonders, would he have the slightest clue what it takes to turn students into first-rate young lawyers?

In the comments to this post, an anonymous young (read “untenured”) professor raises the issue:

I’m a somewhat new (untenured) professor and a CJA attorney for criminal appellate matters. I take students on to do as much of the work as they’re capable of, and I teach them as much as I can commensurate with representing a (real) client. I get paid by the court, and they get paid by the court. Luckily, I’m at a school that, for all I can tell, values this experience. It also informs my teaching and scholarship in demonstrable and substantive ways. This, by the way, in addition to a heavy service load, full teaching schedule, and scholarship. Here’s the thing: I’m almost certain that if I went on the job market for a higher-tier school, I’d have to downplay or virtually hide this work.

I have to wonder whether CJA knows that he’s billing for law student hours, or whether he’s paying the law students the full freight, but I digress.  Such naivete, thinking that his appellate practice is valued in the new paradigm of teaching excellence.  Orin Kerr schools him in response.

Anon, sadly, that’s pretty much true, although it may depend somewhat on the school. I argued a Supreme Court case on an issue I had written about in my work while I was doing a visit at a higher-ranked school. I tried not to bring up the case during the visit, as my sense was that it would probably hurt my candidacy by making me seem too much like a lawyer.

For most, arguing before the Supreme Court is a highlight, a good thing that most lawyers never get to do. Not that it adds much to a lawprofs ability to turn minds of mush into first-rate lawyers, since few, if any, will ever do so, and the experience bears little correlation to what happens in the trenches, but still, it’s kind of impressive.  Not for lawprofs, however. It’s a scarlet letter, a taint, to be hidden so none of the other scholars laugh at you and call you dirty names, like lawyer.  Ewww.

But fear not, despite this environment of doing the hard and dirty work of teaching undesirable courses to unappreciative teacups.  There will still be room for scholars.

Insofar as scholarship forms an important part of the modern faculty portfolio, expectations of excellent, impactful scholarship should be high — indeed, in this difficult environment, especially high.  Law profs have an exceptionally enviable gig.  Let’s just suppose that faculty members need to demonstrate their suitability for this gig on an annual basis, and with unimpeachable evidence that they are doing their scholarly work at a level that befits this great job.

Yes, lawprofs do have “an exceptionally enviable gig,” and it is therefore hardly a burden to demand that they do pretty much exactly what they were  doing before the New Normal, like writing “excellent, impactful scholarship!” ([S]ee Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy, 104 Mich. L.R. 1523 [2006].) 

The takeaway is that some rookie lawprof is going to be miserable being saddled with teaching the crap course no one else wants, like Evidence, and that the law porn finding its way to scholarly mailboxes everywhere will include the word “excellence” as often as possible.  

And as before, lawyers need not apply, because that would just feed into the arrogance of the irritants, who just don’t get what law school is really all about. 

Having spent an unfortunate amount of time recently traveling on Interstate 40 in North Carolina, this story is very personal to me.  While my vehicle adhered strictly to the speed limit, as it always does, other cars whizzed by at a fairly high rate of speed, their drivers often waving at us in a holiday greeting preferred by locals using only one finger.  Driving the speed limit on I-40 is not really a good way to make friends.

But when Corporals Bass and Pope of the Sampson County sheriff’s office spied a green minivan traveling at the ridiculously high rate of speed of 73 in a 70 mile-per-hour zone, they took notice. Based upon my personal observation, it was likely because the van was the slowest vehicle on the highway by a wide margin. 

What they saw “concerned” them. From the Newspaper.com :

The second-highest court in North Carolina last week ruled police had no business stopping a car because its occupants appeared to be driving while nervous. On April 15, 2011, a pair of Sampson County sheriff’s deputies were running a speed trap on Interstate 40 when they noticed a green minivan. Corporal Bass and Pope each testified the vehicle slowed from 73 MPH to 65 MPH in the 70 MPH zone and that the driver and passenger stared straight ahead and “appeared nervous” as they passed.

The officers pulled out and caught up to the minivan. When the patrol car pulled along side, the minivan occupants did not make eye contact. The deputies claimed they saw the vehicle cross the fog line and was driving slowly, so they pulled it over for “unsafe movement.” A dashcam video of the incident shows no crossing of the fog line or other evidence of unsafe driving.

We find it hard to believe that these officers could tell Ms. Canty and defendant were ‘nervous’ as they passed by the officers on the highway and as the officers momentarily rode alongside them,” Judge Cheri Beasley wrote for the court.

The judges also dismissed the idea that the minivan’s slowing after seeing a patrol car running a speed trap [provided cause for the stop].

“The reduction in speed standing alone could be explained a number of different ways, including normal apprehension many people feel when approaching a law enforcement officer,” Judge Beasley wrote. “Nervousness, failure to make eye contact with law enforcement, and a relatively small reduction in speed is ‘conduct falling within the broad range of what can be described as normal driving behavior… Based on the totality of the circumstances, these officers lacked reasonable suspicion to initiate the traffic stop that resulted in the search and seizure of the weapons in this case.”

The judges declared the lawyer in this case should have filed a motion to suppress the evidence gathered during the traffic stop. Because the defense counsel was “ineffective,” the three-judge panel ordered a new trial in which the motion to suppress would likely succeed.

We cannot discern a strategic advantage by not filing a motion to suppress the incriminating evidence. Defense counsel apparently realized that the search was illegal but chose not to file a motion to suppress…

Despite our secular government’s tepid refusal to recognize that all the best deals on shiny merchandise are grounded in our historic Christian ethic, the Obama Administration has snuck a little gift for immigrants under the tree.  No matter how many haters prefer to arbitrarily rail against groups speaking different languages or enjoying different customs than their grandparents did, ICE-master and Obama elf Janet Napolitano announced the change :

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano has directed ICE to focus its resources on key priorities in all aspects of its immigration enforcement efforts.

This guidance limits the use of detainers to individuals who meet the department’s enforcement priorities and restricts the use of detainers against individuals arrested for minor misdemeanor offenses such as traffic offenses and other petty crimes, helping to ensure that available resources are focused on apprehending felons, repeat offenders and other ICE priorities.

The new policy places stricter conditions on when Immigration and Customs Enforcement sends requests, known as detainers, to local law-enforcement agencies asking them to hold suspected immigration violators in jail until the government can pick them up. Detainers will be issued for serious offenders — those who have been convicted or charged with a felony, who have three or more misdemeanor convictions, or have one conviction or charge for misdemeanor crimes like sexual abuse, drunken driving, weapons possession or drug trafficking. Those who illegally re-entered the country after having been deported or posing a national-security threat would also be detained. But there would be no detainers for those with no convictions or records of only petty offenses like traffic violations.

Fires know no religion and take no holidays, so when the alarm went off in Webster, northeast of Rochester, volunteer firefighters Michael J. Chiapperini, 43, and Tomasz Kaczowka, 19, went to work.  On Christmas Day, 2012, they no longer live. Had they died fighting the fire, it would have been mere tragedy, but that was a risk they knowingly undertook.

Dying in a hail of bullets as they and other vollies approached the burning house wasn’t part of the deal.  Fire isn’t the only thing that persists despite the joyous season.  So too does mental illness, of the sort that manifests itself in pointless murder.

The  New York Times explains:

But it apparently was a trap, the authorities said. There were a house and a car burning. There was also a waiting killer, who had stationed himself like a sniper on a berm above the firefighters.

Before they could begin to extinguish the fire, the firefighters were met by a burst of gunfire. Four were hit by the volley of bullets, and two died.

For a few hours, the scene was chaotic: flames ignited adjacent houses as the police frantically searched for the gunman. They would find him dead near the beach, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

There will be no trial or soul searching. The shooter, 62-year-old William Spengler, is dead too, and almost certainly mentally ill. There is no reason to suspect he held any particular malice toward the two dead firefighters, but they just happened to be the ones who showed.  Just doing their volunteer job of saving lives and property.

Since the Newtown tragedy, talking heads angrily debate the solution so that it never happens again.  And yet it did, even if it was outside a school and the victims weren’t first graders.  Only people whose perspective is warped argue over which innocent victim’s death is worse. They are all needless and horrible. They were all deserving of life.

All the pieces happened again in Webster. Guns. Mental illness. People who didn’t deserve to die, but did.  Differences, for sure, but death unifies the stories. 

Most people will rejoice in the fact that Stengler, the madman who murdered the two and wounded others, took his own life, just as they did for Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter.  Maybe I’m the only one who takes no comfort in the death of either. Perhaps they are as evil as most will assume, but they were still human beings, and they both suffered from their own demons who took a beautiful, pure baby and turned them into killers.  Maybe with the right care, they would have done nothing to make their name known as a killer. 

Despite all the years Stengler spent in prison, from 1981 to 1998, for bludgeoning his 92-yearold grandmother to death, he apparently didn’t come out more mentally sound than he went in. So much for the benefits of prison for the mentally ill. 

Presents under trees have been turned into cinders.  Presents under trees will go unopened this morning. Instead, the ground will be opened to accept the remains of the victims.  And there will be more angry debate and name calling about guns, mental illness and armed guards in schools, each voice screaming about how its solution is right and everyone else is stupid, evil, liberal and deportable.

This presupposes that there are solutions to all the bad things man can do.  Pieces of the arguments make sense, but only to a degree that can be embraced by the myopic and simplistic.  We are a wondrous and terrible creature. We do acts of kindness and terror.  We show monumental compassion and horrible hatred.  We are strong and fragile.  Every solution has its merit, and yet fails to fix who and what we are.  Anyone who can’t see the arguments on all sides chooses to be blind.

For the families of the dead firefighters, Christmas Day will be a day of mourning, arranging for funerals and trying to find an explanation for why this happened to them.  They won’t find an answer, even though they may grab hold of anything that brings them a slight degree of comfort.  They are entitled to whatever brings them comfort.

The rest of us are not entitled to seize other people’s tragedies and use them for our own purposes.  Not even if emotions are strong, and we really, really believe our solution is the answer.  There is no magic bullet that will end tragedy and violence at the hands of human beings.  If you feel the need to do something, anything, then gather your children today, Christmas Day, make them put down their shiny new electronic toys and make sure they know they are loved. 

While even this won’t prevent mental illness or access to a weapon, whether a gun or bomb, a speeding car, machete or fire, it is one of the few things we, as human beings, can do to make this a better world.  And no one will call you mean names for doing so.

It was near the corner of 57th and 10th, midtown but far enough west that no respectable person was likely to see it.  There is little information as to the homeless man involved, except that he was eventually taken away by ambulance.  And not because he had a bullet embedded in any part of his body.

But  the image is still very wrong.



and…



There are other photos, all similarly mundane, but for the fact that they show a homeless man being held in a body bag on the sidewalk.

Ignite Revolution described the scene:

The man could be heard saying to the officers, “you´ve had me on the ground for an hour! I can´t get transported or nothing!? when you take this off my eyes, I´m taking everybody´s names and numbers!” In response, the officers just stood around laughing because they know, just as well as we all do, that NYPD officers can get away with almost any kind of mental, verbal, or physical abuse and violence against those they arrest.