Last week a presumably deranged/stupid/confused/criminal/lunatic/pick your adjective individual decided to go police hunting in a city nearby. He unfortunately had some success. Three RCMP officers are dead and two are injured. There was a two day manhunt for this individual and he was found/caught without any further injuries. The city spent two days in virtual lock-down while police from all over the country searched.
My pitting is of the outpouring of gratitude on the part of everyone to the RCMP for ‘keeping us safe’.
Errrrmmm, actually, as far as I can tell and as far as the facts support, the public was never in any danger from this individual. He was only targeting police.* I suppose anyone getting caught in the potential crossfire would have been in danger but I’m struggling to see how the police did such a fabulous job of protecting anyone but themselves.** There’s nothing wrong with that, mind you, I just wonder if there would have been such a massive manhunt, and over the top (imho) public mourning if the victims were five random civilians.
So… let the flaming begin. :o ***
*it’s a crap article but it does show what seems to have been the motive of the killer.
** there’s the further issue of why exactly this guy had such a hate on for police and if, perhaps, aggressive police behavior creates these sorts of events. That might be another topic altogether.
*** I wouldn’t dare express these thoughts to anyone I know. That’s why I’m posting in the anonymity of the pit.
Which do you think is more likely, OP?
(a) Guy who is hunting down and killing police officers in cold blood is otherwise harmless and would never hurt a civilian;
or (b) guy would have zero problem killing blacks/Jews/women/immigrants/whites/whoever the voices tell him to kill next.
Law enforcement officers put their lives on the line to protect us, and we are grateful for their sacrifices. Unfortunately, those officers made the ultimate sacrifice. It doesn’t matter whether they were killed while protecting a civilian or whether they were killed because some lunatic had a hard-on for cops. They were killed because they had chosen to protect and serve. That cost them their lives, and we are sad.
Here’s to the RCMP, our bad-ass friends to the north.
So, your problem isn’t with the fact that the police officers worked hard to catch someone who was murdering police officers, it was with the scale of the manhunt / mourning? What scale would you have preferred?
Why wouldn’t you dare express these thoughts to people you know?
Did they though? I mean, if some guy randomly shoots my Grandma, I’m not going to claim my Grandma is a hero who made the ultimate sacrifice. A cop who gets randomly shot by some guy with random chemicals in his brain is in the exact same boat as my Grandma and isn’t a hero any more than she is, he’s just a guy who died for no reason, and we’re sorry he’s dead.
But hey, given sheer number of such shootings these days, one can perhaps forgive a few being missed out in national coverage. Nevertheless, I’m absolutely certain that five random mooks getting shot anywhere else in Canada would get just about as much attention as the Moncton shootings.
I did the badge and gun thing for a while and I’m not buying into the “serve and protect” bullshit or that any cop who gets killed on duty is automatically a hero. I don’t think I met even one LEO in my whole life who put on the badge out of altruism.
Not altruism, but I’ve met many and am friends with several who take their mission to protect and serve extremely seriously. It’s a job, but not all jobs have the same sense of responsibility.
Doesn’t this tell you something about what you’re saying? How would the people you know respond, and why would you expect us to respond differently? Those cops weren’t gunned down as random citizens, they were killed specifically because they’re cops. They’re the ones who normally protect us from the crazies, and they’re gone now. Think of it this way: There are now three fewer people protecting your precious ass.
I don’t know if you realized this, OP, but the officers shot were responding to calls from the public that an “armed individual was roaming their neighbourhood”.
So even though the public didn’t realize that they were not the targets (and therefore not in danger), the RCMP were in fact responding and prepared to protect the people from this gunman if necessary.
I have to admit, I wouldn’t expect the RCMP to do that. Down below the 49th, not so much.
In this case it seems he was specifically targeting the police. He had multiple opportunities to do civilians and didn’t.
I don’t disagree. And I am sad.
Something a little more in keeping with the facts? I’ll even concede that the manhunt would probably have been equally intense if the five victims were random civilians… well, maybe. I sorta doubt they would have hauled out the super surveillance aircraft. I could be wrong.
I’m not a complete idiot. I much prefer being flamed anonymously.
Well, no, not really. Most of the public doesn’t get paid to carry guns and arrest people and uphold the law etc.
Yes, it is.
And I’m sorry these three guys are dead as well. It sucks when anyone is killed for no good reason.
Ermm, no not really. Not in the sense of the city being shut down, not only for the manhunt but also for the public mourning and funeral.
It’s not that precious.
Yes, they were doing their jobs. And I respect them for that and I’m sad they died. That’s not what I’m complaining about.
Y’know, I’m prepared to give an outpouring of gratitude to anybody who takes a bullet so that I don’t have to. I don’t give a fuck whether they’re cops or civilians, but geez, they deserve a big fucking THANKYOU.
Are you a complete moron slumtrimpit? Are you pitting those who dodged the bullets that might have hit them in the guts, or the cops who actually got shot?
My god, but you’re stupid. Stupid and even fucking more stupid.
In all my years here, I reckon this thread would have to take the award for STUPID.
