KIDS And COPS: Contrasting The Public Response To Both Kinds Of Killings

When kids are murdered in a school, it’s the catalyst for a national conversation because we ‘must do something’. But when the murder of police officers is shattering records… bupkis.

When we’re looking at the murder of children at school, it’s important to remember that the failure points in some of those cases involved the simplest of fixes. In Uvalde, for example, an unsecured door allowed the killer to gain entry. Only then did he become a threat to the children inside.

Contrast that to the story just a few days later where the School Resource Officer saved the lives of all the children in his care.

A “suspicious person” outside an elementary school in Alabama was reportedly shot and killed by a school resource officer and local law enforcement on Thursday while all the reported 34 children inside remained safe.

…Speaking with reporters following the incident, the Gadsden City Schools Superintendent Tony Reddick said the community is “very blessed that our staff took care of all our regular protocol in regards to school safety” when an “aggressive” man “went to several doors trying to get in” the school while students were in summer learning programs. — TownHall

The world will always have bad people in it. But we can take reasonable steps to keep our kids from being easy pickings for any scumbag who thinks our media will turn him into an instant celebrity.

Meanwhile, America is faced with the news of yet another two law enforcement officers whose lives have been cut short in the line of duty.

Two police officers — one a 22-year veteran and the other a rookie — were shot and killed in the Los Angeles County city of El Monte late Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. The suspect is also dead. The mayor said the officers were “essentially ambushed.”

The shooting occurred at about 4:45 p.m. local time when El Monte officers responded to a report of a stabbing at a motel. When they arrived, they “immediately took gunfire,” police said. — CBS

It is natural to be concerned about the safety of children.

But it is also fair to ask ourselves whether our response is a rational response that will improve safety, or if we are defaulting to a kneejerk emotional response and making changes to the law that will impact people who have done nothing wrong while failing to make any meaningful improvements to safety.

To hear some people tell the story, our kids are dropping like flies. But how frequent is this threat, really?

According to NBC, we’ve had 23 people killed and 23 injured in four school shootings so far this year. Had that back door in Uvalde been secured, and an armed officer stationed at the main entrance, that fatality number comes down to two. Even if he managed to get inside, had the officers charged in sooner, many more lives could have been saved.

Two fatalities is still too high, to be sure, but it dramatically changes the perspective.

At the same time, the record-setting figures for murdered police officers last year — many times being ambushed while arriving on scene in response to a victim’s cry for help — pales in comparison to the number we’re already seeing this year.

Early last December, we saw this headline: Police officers shot, killed in 2021 at all-time high: National Fraternal Order of Police

From that story:

As of Tuesday midnight, the FOP recorded 314 officers shot in the line of duty — 58 of whom were killed.

“We are on pace this year to see the highest number of officers shot in the line of duty in one year ever recorded,” FOP president Patrick Yoes said in a Wednesday statement.

That was with another month left in the year. This past April, we were told that we are on track for even worse numbers this year, with a trendline going steadily higher.

The National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the world’s largest organization of law enforcement officers, has counted 101 officers shot in the line of duty as of April 1, including 17 fatally, so far in 2022.

The latest figure marks a 43% increase compared to the number of officers shot at the same time period in 2021 and a 63% increase compared to 2020, FOP reports. —FoxNews

Between lax punishment of crimes, and years of ‘respectable’ mainstream voices like politicians and the media demonizing our police, it’s starting to look like open season on the men and women the rest of us depend upon to keep our streets from devolving into the Wild West.

We routinely hear our ‘experts’ scream and cry about ‘doing something’ for schools, even though we have already mentioned some highly effective ways to protect our students earlier in this article.

But when are we going to start taking the safety of our police seriously? Maybe we could take some steps forward and look at ways to make them more likely to make it home to their families at the end of a shift.

Could we start by making it a federal offense to attack a police officer? And how about something like a lifetime sentence (or perhaps even making it a capital offense) for firing a gun at a police officer?

We’ve been told for the last two years that it’s politically insensitive to say ‘Blue Lives Matter’.

Regardless of what political stripe you happen to wear, it’s time we start to act as though their lives actually DO matter. The lives of our own loved ones just might depend upon it.

Psalms of War: Prayers That Literally Kick Ass is a collection, from the book of Psalms, regarding how David rolled in prayer. I bet you haven’t heard these read, prayed, or sung in church against our formidable enemies — and therein lies the Church’s problem. We’re not using the spiritual weapons God gave us to waylay the powers of darkness. It might be time to dust them off and offer ‘em up if you’re truly concerned about the state of Christ’s Church and of our nation.

Also included in this book, Psalms of War, are reproductions of the author’s original art from his Biblical Badass Series of oil paintings.

This is a great gift for the prayer warriors. Real. Raw. Relevant.