Officer Alex points out the folly of making a hero out of a criminal
Lawrence Campbell was a good man, said people who knew him, because he’d been to jail but had turned over a new leaf since leaving prison in January. He was married the next month and was only under investigation for one murder since then when he entered a Walgreens in Jersey City, New Jersey, faked a question to a 58-year-old security guard, then stabbed him and took his gun.
Rather than robbing the store, he told witnesses to, “Watch the news later, I’m going to be famous!” and then lay in wait as officers responded. When the first cruiser pulled onto the lot, he fired more than a dozen shots into the windshield and killed 23-year-old Officer Melvin Santiago, whose one-year anniversary would have been this last Tuesday. Santiago never left the car, much less threatened Campbell.
Additional responding officers continued Campbell’s gunfight and concluded it with his death, just outside the car where Ofc. Santiago lay. All of which makes this the cops’ fault, of course, and resulting in what local Jersey reporters are calling potential race riots in the city.
“He was a good man,” said a neighbor of Campbell (about the suspect, not the cop, mind you). “He looked out for everybody on the block.”
And so his impromptu memorial grew larger than that of the cop who was murdered in his car for responding to Campbell’s initiated crime. “Thug in Peace” one touching note said, honorary balloons and (empty) liquor bottles adorning the site. (The memorial was taken down by order of the mayor.)
There is actually more to the story (rival Crip gang members are offering to ride along with Jersey cops due to threats of Blood gang member retaliations against police, citing “the enemy of their enemy is their friend”), but let’s just stop at this prior point.
Local residents are gathering to build a second memorial to Campbell and to continue to praise him. (You know, the suspected murderer who executed a cop after stabbing an 58-year-old and taking his gun. This is the “good man” to which they refer.)
What I like about The Pulse is that at this point I can say what is being left out of most published pieces on the subject: That “shit is seriously wrong” with people who can, for any reason, mourn the death of a criminal more than the cop sent to stop him—the cop who never so much as opened his car door.
I even get to pose the question, “What the shit is the matter with you people?” The statement is a standalone and the question is rhetorical, but after all my research it’s finally nice to see those words, even if it’s only because I am the only one to publish them thus far.
A local story that’s been told in these pages before is one in which a witness to a burglary in progress calls 911 and police are sent to what turns out to in fact be a robbery that was about to occur.
The bad guy sees the uniformed cop approaching (on foot this time) and fires, by-God striking the copper in the chest. The vest caught it and the cop had time to return fire after being shot, his own bullets finding the bad guy’s neck and calf, killing him.
And the cop’s new label?
“Racially motivated murderer.” The cop was a “racist” for shooting the black man…who had just shot him in the chest.
As in Jersey City, this crime was re-manufactured despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The cop was shot first, and still made out to be the bad guy.
America, Planet Earth? If you listen closely, you can actually listen to us getting dumber and dumber by the second. “Idiocracy” is on the rise.
Screw climate change, screw passenger planes being rocketed in the Ukraine… These changes could wind up as permanent.
Let me help you: Officer Santiago dreamed of being a cop, and was on the force living that dream for just under a year. HE is the one that responded to the criminal who was stabbing people, and HE is the one you should be praising, not his dimwitted executioner. And for just having to type something so obvious? Now I’m dumber too as a result of having to compose it. Thanks.
Accountability, folks. We can’t keep making it an option.
(Rest in peace, Officer.)