'We ask that all Texans join us in praying for the officer's loved ones as they deal with the aftermath of THIS UNIMAGINABLE TRAGEDY. Attacks against law enforcement officers will not be tolerated in Texas and must be met with swift justice.'
- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on shooting death of police officer in San Antonio
I really hate when people refer to events such as this as 'tragedies'. They are not tragedies. A tragedy is a child dying of cancer or a person killed in an accident. This was no accident. This was no illness. This was an assassination. Pure and simple. It was evil and hateful. Tragedies, whilst enormously painful and transformative, are neither evil nor hateful.
Tragedies imply an absence of malice. From what we know, that definitely doesn't seem to be the case here. Perhaps, I'm being too picky, but I want no absolution, implied or otherwise, to be given to this evil creature or his actions.
Before I go further, let me quickly dispense with any rebuttal that sounds like 'But, but, but, what about due process?!?!?!'
Of course, the person behind this heinous act is entitled to due process IN A COURT OF LAW. By refusing to call this event a 'tragedy', I'm not advocating that he be apprehended and put up against a wall.
This is what happened:
McManus said Marconi pulled over a vehicle outside of the Public Safety Headquarters. While he was inside his vehicle writing a ticket, a black vehicle pulled up behind him.
The driver of that vehicle got out, walked up to Marconi’s driver-side window and shot him in the head, McManus said.
Then the suspect reached into the window and shot Marconi a second time, he said.
After the shooting the suspect got back in his car and drove away.
We need to afford the English language some due process or something before we call this an assassination and not a 'tragedy'... Yeah, no.
Moreover, even if this killer is found to be not guilty by reason of insanity, he still assassinated a cop. It should be noted that the bar to meet the affirmative defence of reason of insanity is very high...as it should be. Personally, I can separate the legal from the reality. A person may be legally insane; i.e., incapable at the time the offence was committed of distinguishing between right and wrong, but still aware that he is killing someone.
We don't refer to John Hinckley as an 'attempted tragedist'. He may have been found to be 'legally insane' when he attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981 (I don't agree - and the laws were dramatically overhauled as a result of the Hinckley verdit), but he knew he was trying to kill someone. In other words, if you kill your children because the voices that you hear are telling you that they are 'possessed', you may be found not guilty by reason of insanity, but you still knew that you were killing your children when you killed them.
What occurred to Governor Abbott, who was paralysed when a tree branch fell on him whilst jogging, was a tragedy. What happened to Governor Abbott was, if I recall correctly, the result of negligence. Under our system of laws, such is considered to be a tort and is handled in our civil courts.
When a person commits a cold-blooded execution, it obviously has tragic consequences, but it isn't a 'tragedy'. It's a heinous crime that deserves swift and severe justice...in our criminal law system.
If lightning strikes a car and kills the family inside, that's a tragedy. An 'Act of God', so to speak. If a man pulls alongside that car and guns down the family, it is not the same. One is a malicious act.
If a man pulls up behind a patrol car, gets out of his car, walks up to the cop's car, shoots him once in the head and then leans inside of the car and shoots him again, which is what happened to Detective Ben Marconi a 20-year veteran of the San Antonio Police Department, it's not the same as an 'Act of God' or an accident or an illness. It is an act that we have decided is a criminal offence.
Referring to this outrageous, heinous crime and others as a 'tragedy' has the effect of putting it in the same category as the others, which diminishes its heinousness and our sanctions against such acts.
Furthermore, calling these kinds of events 'tragedies' also allows some to argue that the perpetrator is not really to blame. He had a horrible childhood. White people made him do it. Etc, etc, etc. These types of arguments lead to the absolution, to some degree, of the perpetrator and transmit his evil actions onto others. The perpetrator becomes a victim in the 'tragedy', too.
Of course the death of a child, husband, wife, mother, father, friend, etc, is a personal tragedy, but this is a CRIME. A crime committed against not just the actual victim, but against civil society that tears at the very fabric that holds us together.
A crime against us all.
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