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There’s a lot we don’t know, and one thing we wish we didn’t know.
Namely, that last night, while we were putting the kids to bed, two men with uniforms and badges came under fire on a quiet suburban street outside Syracuse, New York.
It ended in tears and heartbreak and a line of saluting officers that stretched three blocks down East Adams.
They rest now at the Wallie Howard Forensic Center, named for the last Syracuse cop killed in the line of duty. In coming days there will be autopsies and speeches and services, but no answers.
Not to how it is that evil runs rampant in our streets, and that law and those who enforce it are mocked, and that half the politicians in the state seem to be on the side of the criminals.
Or how it is that the worst of our society continue to deal violence to the best.
It began as some sort of traffic stop on Tipperary Hill earlier in the evening. Whether it was a broken tail light or a rolling stop or some purposeful effort to engage that vehicle and that driver, it began as a simple pull over. And like so many of those anymore, there was no pulling over. There was speeding away.
Fleeing the police is an appearance ticket in New York, and many agencies aren’t allowed to pursue, so the real crooks seldom stop, they gun it and run.
Like this one.
But the Syracuse Police Department got the plate and it came back to an address in Liverpool where an hour or so later they found the vehicle in question in the driveway.
At some point contemporaneous to that, the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office was called in to assist. And at some point at least two officers – one from each agency – approached the vehicle. It was a veteran deputy and a three-year cop. And they saw guns and or gun magazines in the car.
And then they heard the racking of the action.
That’s what the radio transmission said.
Either the slide of a handgun or the charging handle of a rifle.
And it was on.
One neighbor told the newspaper there were about 20 rounds fired. Another neighbor told another reporter that shortly thereafter he saw a limp officer being carried hurriedly to a sheriff’s cruiser, which screamed away. They shut down the Interstate onramp to clear the way for him. For them. Both of them.
And the wait and pray began at Upstate.
They called out Air One for overwatch, and put officers with rifles around the house where it happened. But everyone who was free, from miles around, on duty or called in from bed, gathered as guardians do, melding their strength and their grief, the Thin Blue Line, outside the Emergency Department, keeping watch.
Until their worst fears and the sad rumors were confirmed.
Somewhere, two families were notified, hearts were broken and dreams were destroyed, and “greater love hath no man than this” came at the cost of greater pain than most of us can imagine.
There were two white ambulances, and silence, and the flashing lights.
“Detail, present arms,” the command was given, and the salutes were rendered, eyes forward, hearts heavy, world turned upside down.
The chief and the mayor and the sheriff spoke in the glare of the television lights, three good men on a horrible night, and half the city slept blissfully unaware for another few hours.
But we all awaken this morning to a hard truth, and the reminder of a dark reality, because we’ve heard the chief and the mayor and the sheriff before. The heartbreak in this town takes many forms, but it is seldom far away, and the peace is never long lived.
Because of a corruption of the culture and an abandonment of the laws.
We don’t know what specifically was behind these murders, what sort of criminal doing what sort of crime sped off from the officers on Tipp Hill, but we recognize the stench, and we wait for the details, suspecting the worst from the criminals and from the politicians.
That all will come. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.
We will learn names, get insights into lives, see smiling family pictures on the evening news.
And we will be sick to our stomachs, some blend of grief and rage, and the desperation to escape the cancer of criminality that has come to define our era.
But today we salute, and pray, and remind ourselves that the law enforcement officers some of our neighbors spit on and curse at are this society’s best people, and last hope.