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Sheriffs Need to Take The Lead
CRITIQUING MASS MURDER AFTER THE FACT
By Jim R. Schwiesow
April
27, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
The Virginia Tech massacre continues to fill the airwaves as law enforcement commanders boast of their progress in an investigation of the events after the fact. Other than to confirm the fact that a sociopath had single-handedly and cold-bloodedly executed thirty-two people and shot and wounded fifteen more over a time span of two and one-half hours, and that the slaughter took place under their very noses what else needs to be said. I strongly suspect that the Virginia Tech hierarchy and the local law enforcement agents will attempt to submerge the glaring inadequacies of the system and their incompetence with a barrage of trivial observations as to peripheral circumstances in order to avoid having to explain how a maniacal lone gunman could stalk the campus like a grim reaper for two and one-half hours and not be either detected or confronted. That there was no warning to the residents of the campus from the time of the initial involvement of the campus police at the front end of the two and a half-hour killing spree begs credulity.
I, for one, am tired of hearing the TV announcements of their magnificent progress in the investigation and of the many man-hours of work involved. This is what they get paid for. It used to be that law enforcement professionals did such without compensation, and without bragging. You can bet that the public is paying for a ton of overtime for this supposed selfless sacrifice.
True to form the liberal media, a bevy of half-baked liberal opinion writers, some loud-mouthed TV and entertainment personalities and many of our freedom killing politicians are clamoring for gun control. Don�t you just marvel at the chutzpah of these half-wits? We are observing first hand the results of the failed policies of the Virginia Tech administration that disarmed all of the residents and visitors to the campus and deprived them of any mechanism of self-defense, and these idiots want to condemn millions more in the nation to the same fate that befell these forty-seven unfortunate victims. It is almost as if ignorance and stupidity are contagious, and that we are suffering though an extended epidemic of the same. Through the years we the people have allowed this kind to dismantle the bill of rights, thwart true justice, vilify promoters of individual freedoms, promote the murder of innocent babies and demolish the peoples� sovereignty, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits.
We have suffered through too many of these murderous rampages to not learn a lesson from such. Either our law enforcement leaders and our administrative geniuses are hard learners or they are hardheaded and have no capacity for scholarship. When they die they ought to be buried with their head above ground because it�s more durable than a tombstone.
Rumors abound that the local law enforcement commanders were ordered by federal bureaucratic agencies to stand down until their agents arrived on scene to assume control over the situation. After forty-three years in law enforcement nothing comes to mind in regard to the feds being able to force a local law enforcement agency to stand down in the face of a great threat to the lives of the people in that agency's jurisdiction. This rumor, which is supposed to have emanated from anonymous phone calls from personnel of the agencies involved, would seem to be a convenient way for the campus police chief and others to deflect criticism of their do nothing tactics by blaming the feds. I would tend to think that if there was a failure to respond quickly and effectively it was due to some stupid protocol that was drafted by �proactive� administrators.
During my latter years in office, during a time when law enforcement had already been afflicted by the same stupidity that afflicts our other government entities, it was chic to draft proactive procedures manuals. The new and enlightened modernists embraced the program like it was a gift from above. Soon they were falling all over themselves to write protocol to deal with all kinds of hypothetical situations. It never occurred to these dim bulbs that one couldn�t project the myriad of circumstances that might be a part of the next crisis that confronted them. Common sense, a commodity in short supply in our society today, dictates that it is expedient to respond to the situation at hand and quickly decide how to deal with the circumstances of the situation. In other words one must react to what confronts him, rather than blindly follow words in a manual, which were written in advance of a given predicament.
The following comes from a story related to the attendees of a conference on Forensic Pathology, which I attended many years ago. Doctor Davis the Chief Medical Examiner of Dade County, Florida was one of the featured speakers, a realistic curmudgeon who was blessed with common sense that came from a ton of forensic experience. The good doctor told of the events surrounding the crash of an airliner in the middle of the everglades, which strewed bodies, body parts, personal affects and wreckage over a wide area. As Dr. Davis related it, and to the best of my recollection, when he arrived on the scene to coordinate the efforts to identify the remains of well over one hundred passengers and crew, he went directly to the command center, which had been set up prior to his arrival.
When he entered the center he was confronted with a table upon which was piled hundreds of personal affects. Various articles of jewelry, wallets, purses, clothing and other articles, which could conceivably impart valuable information as to the identities of those who had perished in the crash, had been collected and brought to the center. When the doctor inquired about this he was informed that protocol required that in instances such as this that valuables must be collected and brought to a central place for safe keeping. It was almost fun to watch the doctor relate this story, his face reddened with the memory of such stupidity. In language, most colorful, he related that he had inquired how in the hell they going to be able to identify these crash victims now that all evidence of their identity had been removed. And just whom he wondered was going to steal these articles from the middle of one of the world�s greatest swamps. I have never forgotten this illustration of bureaucratic stupidity. That some officious and petty bureaucrat would write such a policy and that others would carry it out, under the circumstances, is testimony to the bureaucratic flight from sanity that confronts the hapless people of this nation. There seems to be no hope that we will ever see a return of the common sense of the good old days.
The simple fact is that the same idiot politicians and social reformists, who decry these awful acts, have paved the way for such lunatics to populate the country. They have dismantled a system that was put into place by men far wiser than they will ever have any hope of being. To be perfectly honest they are sophisticated morons. And they have so perverted the social scruples of the nation that there appears to be no way to overcome the monumental damage that has been done. I don�t even have to name them, every discerning American knows who they are.
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That the majority in this country continues to put their faith in such really escapes my understanding. I know this, we haven�t seen the last of these horrific acts, and there will come a time in the very near future when it will be difficult to discern the difference between the criminals who prey upon us and the bureaucrats who do the same.
� 2007 - Jim R. Schwiesow - All Rights Reserved
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Jim Schwiesow is a retired sheriff with 46 years of law enforcement service. He served with the Unites States Army with the occupation forces in post war Berlin, Germany, and has a total of nine years of military service, which includes six years in the U.S. Army Reserve.
His law enforcement service includes: three years in the military police, fifteen years as an Iowa municipal police officer, and twenty-eight years as the duly elected sheriff of Sioux County, Iowa.
Jim has written a number of articles, which have been published in various professional law enforcement journals.
E-Mail: jimr@orangecitycomm.net
Web-Site: www.sheriffjimonline.com
Rumors abound that the local law enforcement commanders were ordered by federal bureaucratic agencies to stand down until their agents arrived on scene to assume control over the situation.
