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Evil Dances for Joy at Deputies Shooting
Having had some complications from eye surgery, I had hoped that when I came back here I would be able to speak about happy or funny things; the kinds of things that amuse or interest me. Sadly, I woke up this morning to find out that I can’t talk about those things.
Yesterday, as I was preparing to go to bed, two Los Angeles County Deputies where shot in the head as they sat in their patrol car. As I write this they are fighting for their lives and their futures. If that was the only story here, it would be tragic enough.
Television and media portray shooting victims in a more or less binary way. Live or die. But “live” in these cases simply means not dying from the gunshot wounds immediately. It doesn’t mean returning to a full, healthy, and productive life. It often means exactly the opposite. Head wounds are not benign.
In 1985, two sets of teens were driving down a country road in Adams County, Illinois, outside Quincy. One car had a single driver. He was returning from his summer job working for the Corps of Engineers on the Mississippi River. The other car had a boy and a girl. Unlike the single driver, these two had been partying all night long. Their blood alcohol levels were off the charts.
In the summer in Illinois, the corn grows tall and it’s over 3 feet high by late July. That’s why the driver of the first vehicle, the young employed man trying to save money for college (he had a National Merit Scholarship to Stanford) didn’t see the lights of the oncoming car around a curve or understand that it was going almost 90 mph. The belted single driver was not ejected. The other two were. It took medics 35 minutes to cut the young man out of the wreck. He was the third victim to arrive at our Emergency Room.
My night shift therapists had their hands full with the first two, and I was called in for the third. I breathed for the young man, and hyperventilated him, blowing off as much CO2 as possible so as to lower his intracranial pressure. We rushed him to the OR for emergency cranial surgery to relieve pressure.
Both drunks died that night. They never had to see the effects of their ignorance on that young man. His brain injury was very severe. I lost track of him after I left the hospital in 1988, but after three years he had barely regained an ability to put on clothes and tie shoes. This is what brain injury does. It steals the soul and personality of its victims. It is cruel and heartless, and anyone in medicine can tell you they’ve seen in a hundred times. So when I hear these officers were shot in the head, I know that the one deputy who is the mother of a six-year-old boy may never come home as his mother, if she comes home at all.
Again, that would be tragedy enough as it is. It would be an awful outcome for both officers simply by virtue of all the rehabilitation they will require. But the horror does not stop there.
The first thing I saw on Twitter this morning was a bunch of people, on camera, showing their faces, talking about going to the hospital to see if the “gang members” (yes, we’re supposed to think that sheriffs are gang members) were dead yet.
Going to cheer on the deaths of the “gang members.”
But that wasn’t enough for these folks. In addition to going to the hospital, they had to try to breach the hospital and go inside and interfere with the medics trying to save those officers. They stood outside and chanted “we hope they die.”
“We Hope They Die.”
That they did this while showing their faces, beaming proudly into the camera, demonstrates such a profound level of evil that it’s difficult to capture. Not since Charles Manson has someone so brazenly devalued human life. Manson was evil; these people take evil a step further.
It is my hope that justice will be served. As I have watched the video of the shooting it appears to be a juvenile who shot the officers. Thus, it appears to be a gang initiation type of event. The juveniles can’t be held to the death penalty (of course, in California, with Newsom, that hardly matters). But every adult member of that gang that was involved in this episode and is a co-conspirator can be. Every last one should get the death penalty.
I hold out no hope for that. I firmly believe California is lost. Yet hope springs eternal, and I pray that the evildoer who shot these deputies, and those who facilitated it, filmed it, delighted in it, and danced in joy near the hospital afterward reap the rewards for their behavior that they so richly deserve.
Published in Policing
Any protesters blocking the entrance to a hospital’s emergency room should be shot on the spot and sent to the morgue for a future autopsy using rusty implements. Are ordinary citizens too cowed by the woke crowd to rise up in anger?
Even if they are afraid, I hope they’re not afraid to get out and vote this November. The future of the last bastion of freedom on this planet hangs in the balance . . .
Vengeance is the Lord’s. He is better at it than we are. Praying the imprecatory psalms.
Utterly vile.
My hope is that the mild response to these rioters is the population’s last grasp at any potential peaceful resolution.
I don’t know how lackadaisical we will be after the election.
I know there are good people in Compton, good people who weep at the evil in their midst.
Edited to add: Illinois (especially central Illinois) is the only state I have ever seen corn growing right up to the edge of roads and growing about 10 feet high. I understand why…the soil is so perfectly rich. However, that more people don’t die at intersections is beyond me.
I am sure the leaders of BLM will be hounded by the Corporate Media to disavow these losers. Just Kidding.
I just sent a message to friends that this represents a descent into anarchy and that I am now wondering if we’re going to make it to November 3 without something very like a Civil War. If this isn’t anarchy, then the English language has lost all meaning.
President Trump called for a quick trial of this shooter — who, by the way, from what little I could make out on the video of the incident, appears to be a child— and possibly the death penalty.
For what it’s worth, acknowledging all the good faith and well meaning arguments against capital punishment, I agree 100% with his statement. There must be a line somewhere — perhaps, as the author of the superb new book, The Stakes, America at the Point of No Return, indicates, we may well have crossed it some time ago.
Our prayers go out for both deputies, the young man and the female deputy who has a 6 year old little boy. May God Bless them in their recovery from this act of sheer barbarity.
I wish all law enforcement well but given the current environment I think they should step down for their safety’s sake. Let the community have what it wants and it’s Democrat politicians desire. A world without cops.
Well, I agree in Big Blue cities. Because clearly thats what they want.
Those of us in the smaller cities and more rural areas will welcome those same cops to our area with open arms.
I agree that is what they want. What I wonder is what do they expect to happen? Spontaneous civic virtue to break out? Did they learn nothing from CHAZ/CHOP? Are they insane or just cynical? and once if falls apart do they really believe they can put it back together?
I just checked Twitter and @Kaepernick7 has not made a statement. Neither has @Nike. I guess they have nothing to say today.
It’s beginning to seem like vigilante justice is inevitable in the same masked hit and run fashion.
Words fail to express how evil this was.
The more law abiding citizens suffer under the same laws that criminal activists skate under, the more likely this will be true.
Law enforcement in Multnomah County are threatening locals for blocking roads in attempts to catch people seen setting fires near their homes vs protestors allowed to block interstate traffic in multiple locations around the US. That’s just the latest instance.
I wonder if homeowners associations and cul-de-sac dwellers might start looking into gated community set ups.
There is probably a pretty fine line between chasing off people because they look like they are up to no good and chasing off people because they are a ‘wrong color’.
Regardless, what people are picking up on is that police cannot be depended on as much as they could be in the recent past.
I hear you and had the same reaction – heartbreaking. We must pray for law enforcement, and for a turn in the sheer coldness of human beings toward each other. I hope your eye surgery came out ok, and you are feeling better. You helped save lives, so take heart in that, and thank you for that story and your skills for the betterment of this fallen world.
The female deputy was shot in the jaw and called for help while assisting her partner. She will need some reconstructive surgery but should not be in danger. She applied a tourniquet to her partner, suggesting it might not have been a head wound.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8731819/Hero-LA-deputy-shot-ambush-called-help-applied-tourniquet-partner.html
Or a pressure wrap might be called a tourniquet by the reporter.
Reporters have also referred to firearms as “fully semi-automatic.” Reporters don’t necessarily know what they are writing about.
Hardly worth bringing up in this despicable situation, but for background information, never do a pressure wrap on a head wound. There’s the risk of driving debris into the brain. Bandage – yes. Pressure – no. As if a reporter would know that, either.
I read on some Twitter thread today (either the LA sheriff or the local Fox affiliate) that the shooter appears child-like because the video was taken through a fish-eye lens. I also just read that the male deputy had several wounds one of which was in the arm and one in the head.
When I went to paramedic school we were cautioned about opiates and head wounds. We were told to ignore scalp bleeding and focus on PERL, etc. You’re right though, reporters get very few things medical correct.
I like the way you put “necessarily” in there. The sentence was perfect without it!
You’ll run into ones who actually possess some knowledge about the subject from time to time. They can’t all be vacuous.
Arrest:
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/09/30/deonte-lee-murray-arrested-ambush-shooting-of-la-deputy-in-compton/
May he never be free again.
Assuming of course he is guilty. Amen.
Well, yeah, that.