Some Animals...

Last night in a city not more than a few miles from Bloody Nib Manor, Hawaiian Gardens (a city that was actually named after a hamburger stand), a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff was murdered in cold blood by a gang member: Sheriff's Deputy Killed in Hawaiian Gardens .

Needless to say, any such death is a tragedy, especially for the victim's family and co-workers.I can only offer my prayers for the survivors of Deputy Ortiz.

Lee Baca, the L.A County Sheriff, has since come out with a statement that the number one job of the LACSD is the suppression, perhaps even the elimination of, gangs. The odd thing is that until the tragic event of Deputy Ortiz's death, Sheriff Baca has not made such a statement in at least two years. At that time Deputy David March was murdered in the City of Industry by an illegal alien gang member who has since fled to Mexico. Since that time the only thing Sheriff Baca has complained about on this issue is that the cacachrocy that is the government of Mexico has refused to hand over the killer of David March to American justice. His tirades against gangs have been few and far between. In the past Mr. Baca (is it a coincidence that his name rhymes with the Japanese word "baka" which means "crazy?") has taken a "Kumbaya" approach to gang problems -- meaning misunderstood and disenfranchised youth-- and has attempted to get more money out of the county for his pet projects. He has released prisoners early from the county jail while crying poor mouth. He has urged the populace of the county to understand and interact with gang members instead of pointing them out for the termites that they are.

In the intervening years between the murders of Deputy March and Deputy Ortiz, more than a few innocent civilians have been murdered by gang members. Baca's voice has been silent during these deaths

What is the conclusion to be drawn from the timing of Sheriff Baca's words? Could it be that those who wear forest green and khaki are somehow more valuable than those who do not wear uniforms?

While I support law enforcement, I do not think that the life of a mother pushing a stroller who is killed by a stray bullet is less precious in the sight of our Lord than is the life of a man who has volunteered to uphold the law. One is an innocent victim. The other is a rough man who has consented to face other rough men.

A deputy or a policeman is, in a sense, a soldier. He is a man who has chosen to place himself in the line of fire. A mother or a liquor store clerk or a bum at the side of a railroad track have not consented to place themselves in danger. They are the innocent, even be they drunks or bad mothers or profiteers, because they did not sign up for the gang war. They have gone into the world unarmed, partially because the sheriff will not allow them to be armed. But it is only the soldiers in the war against gangs that Baca deigns to recognize as victims; not those who happen to have gotten on the wrong side of the wrong people or have been in the wrong place at the wrong time or who have happened to have money that other, more violent people have wanted.

I've been working in the machine shops for more than thirty years. In that time I've seen several of my co-workers gunned down by baddies. We, in the shop, while angry about the situations, have not vowed to get our own against the perps. We left it to the governmental authorities. We expected no special treatment despite the fact that the victim was a man who helped make airplanes fly, nuclear reactors react or roller coasters roll. We, perhaps wrongly, felt that we were among the people who made America get from day to day, and each murder of our brothers was a spoke in the wheel of progress. We never stepped forward to take on gangs as much as we wanted to. We depended upon the deputies and police and marshals who often proved to be ineffective or unintersted unless one of their own are involved. Cops seem to have had a special status while one of us or our wives or our kids catch a bullet or a knife and are just routine cases.

Lee Baca is almost as culpable for the death of Deputy Ortiz as is the gang member who shot him. Lee Baca played the Kumbaya fiddle and we have all suffered for it. There are bad people in the world. They deserve to be put away. Sheriff Baca has wanted to play the caring daddy instead of the sheriff until it was one of his own who caught the bullet. He should have spent more time studying the jailing methods in Maricopa County, AZ, where prisoners are housed in tents and fed a daily diet that costs 98 cents per day and are treated as pariahs, than wasting his time reading the Tao Te Ching or Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Lee Baca, as sheriff, has not paid attention to the decaying quality of gangs on working class society. He has not recognized termites. He has not stated pubicly the danger that gangs pose to society until now. He has not been willing, until now, to publicly recognize that there are bad people who are dangerous to individuals and society.

We here at Bloody Nib Manor mourn the deaths of Deputy Ortiz and Deputy March and all the innocent deaths that occurred between those two deaths. And despite our Christian faith, we hope the worst of all takers of innocent life and soldiers of law. And we hope that perhaps that Sheriff Baca will begin to try less to understand bad people and spend more time trying to apprehend them. That is why he was elected. He was not elected to be county chaplin..