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| Pileup on Spruce Street (Ryan Townsend/DP) |
A: Their job…finally.
In case you’ve been living under a rock (or off campus…under a rock), you have heard about yesterday’s incident in which the Penn Police shot and killed a suspected carjacker who had wielded a gun.
Meanwhile, in the comments-land of the DP website (which you can find by starting in reality and veering sharply left), in between the choruses of cheering students and parents was a contingent of whiny grad students (who apparently moonlight as expert criminologists) are already engaging in Monday-morning quarterbacking of the Penn Police, wagging their fingers at the officers who had the temerity to — horror of horrors — use a gun against a gun-wielding criminal..
Unlike the peanut gallery of malcontents in the DP comments section, the Penn Police had neither the benefit of perfect information, clear hindsight, or limitless time in which to make a judgment call. They made their decision, and as a result one less criminal is roaming the streets of University City — and others may be thinking twice about wreaking havoc on campus. Successful police work is by its very a nature a difficult business full of decisions that are neither easy nor simple.
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| Dramatization |
It is really too bad we can’t separate University City into two districts — one district for people who are concerned over whether police action is “appropriate” and sufficiently “sensitive” to their own moral vanities, and the other district for people whose only concern over the police is whether they are busting enough criminals to keep the rest of us safe. Like most Penn students, I’d rather live in the latter.
In light of the tragedy in Virginia and Philadelphias own skyrocketing homicide rate, Penn’s police deserve all the more praise for their quick and decisive response. For the sake of our own future safety, the Penn Police deserve our support — unless we want them so afraid to go after criminals that they simply will retreat to Dunkin’ Donuts and leave the rest of us out there with nothing but our own indulgent self-righteousness (and some SpectaGuards) to defend us.
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April 17th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Nice post, I couldn’t agree more. However, the first line pisses me off. The Penn Police do their job all the time. Crime increases around campus have nothing to do with the UPPD’s performance — after all, such increases correlate with increases occurring all around Philly, beyond UPPD’s jurisdiction. The Penn cops do an excellent job. I’ve called them many times, done ride-alongs with them, etc. and I can tell you first hand that this is a first-rate police force.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
I’m impressed the Philly police only shot twice. It would have taken NYPD about 50 shots to do the job.
April 18th, 2007 at 2:14 am
The first two shots do the job, the next 48, well, above and beyond the call of duty, as they say.