Duty to act.
That’s the legal concept that says certain people must take those actions necessary to prevent harm to other individuals or society.
Jim Sheppard was a cop, he knows all about duty to act.
Or at least he used to.
Right now, though, it seems like it’s a pretty foreign concept to him. It seems like he forgot.
Because he’s run this mayoral campaign like one of those guys who notices the neighbors’ house on fire and, with the family trapped inside, pulls out a folding chair and sits down to watch.
The headline on his obituary is about to go from “former police chief” to “failed mayoral candidate.”
And I wish, with less than a month left until the decisive Democratic primary, he would pull his head out of his arse and act like he wants to win. I wish he would give the voters of Rochester an actual choice. I wish he would grow a backbone and recognize his duty to act.
Because thus far his campaign has done nothing to justify the two-year expectation that he was a viable alternative to incumbent Lovely Warren. His strategy – which seems to be “mumble and smile” – has failed. Even among his supporters there is concern that his low-key approach to the campaign is falling flat. Their best hope seems to be some calculation of math and apathy and bad weather combined with enough calls and enough rides against an over-confident opponent to maybe if we’re lucky sneak by.
If this was D-Day and he was Eisenhower, nobody would get off the landing craft.
This is meant to jack him up. To ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing. To explain that this campaign isn’t about him, it’s about one of the most beleaguered cities in America and a chance to try something other than more of the same.
Across urban America, cities face challenges just like Rochester – and almost all of them do better. The gantlet of difficulty a youngster of color must run destroys a higher percentage of them in Rochester than almost anywhere else in the United States. That is a heartbreak, and a crime against the future of those youngsters and the families they will one day raise.
This isn’t about creating a feudal kingdom of patronage and personal benefit, this is about saving that family in that burning house.
And over the past three-plus years, Lovely Warren has demonstrated no ability and no particular desire to change things for the better. She has filled in the innerloop, but not the hole in the future of her youngest constituents. The statistics and the reality are horrifying. The best advice you can give Rochester parents is: Move.
Which is where Jim Sheppard was supposed to come in.
He was supposed to be the grown up. He was supposed to lead.
He was supposed to run into the burning house and save the family. He was supposed to act.
But the incumbent has blown him off, and the gadfly has lectured him on how to be a cop and how to be a black man.
And he’s just taken it.
I’m sure on some obscure page of the Dale Carnegie book that’s the right call. But nobody reads that book anymore, and all his calm has bought him is the perception that he’s weak. The sense that maybe he’s just ready to go someplace warm and live off his pension.
What a betrayal of the people of Rochester, and of those who have invested two years in handing him a ready-made political career.
Jim Sheppard likes to tell the story of being the young cop strutting down the street defying anyone to challenge him. He needs to grow those balls back. That man needs to report for duty. Jim Sheppard needs to realize that while that persona is not right for every situation, it is right for some – and this is one of those some. This is a backyard in the middle of the night and he’s all alone on his back with two subjects stomping him. This is fight or die. There is no tomorrow, there is only right now.
There is only between now and primary day. And if he believes he has something to offer the people of Rochester, then he needs to recognize his duty to act and do something about it.
Or he can live with the knowledge that he had his chance to serve and save, and he blew it.