“A Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One”

The lyrics to this Pirates of Penzance song is resurrected by the mainstream media in reporting the failures of modern police to protect the lives of innocent persons. In New York City, a well-known tennis star is tackled and handcuffed by police officers who apparently mistook him for a criminal suspect. “But he’s a tennis star, a tennis star,” whined television news reporters who doubtless would have given no such attention to the event had the victim been a homeless man. Nor would we expect to ever hear the end of the story had the victim been (gasp!) a journalist or, (gasp!) worse yet, a reporter for CNN or the New York Times!

Then there is the story that has been going on in Phoenix for some two weeks now. There have been eleven shootings on the Interstate 10 freeway – the major highway in the Phoenix area – without the shooter(s) being caught. “We are doing everything we can to catch these people,” one local government official after another intoned. When it was reported that a private militia group had gotten involved in looking for the for the thug(s), a TV reporter asked one government official for his response. He was adamant that such private efforts should be rejected, adding that “we’re doing everything we can to catch these people.” The reporter passed up the opportunity to ask a genuine journalistic question: “if you are doing everything you can to catch these people, and you’ve still failed to do so, what possible objections could you have to private persons getting involved?” Of course, had he dared to ask such a politically-incorrect question, this reporter would probably finish his career as a weatherman at a station in Mud Flats, Kansas!

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8:15 pm on September 10, 2015