Ronnie Polaneczky | Trial, execution would be too good for shooter
AFTER MEETING yesterday with the family of fallen Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, a shaken Mayor Street said that, although he didn't support the death penalty, the shooting of Cassidy "makes you re-evaluate your beliefs."
AFTER MEETING yesterday with the family of fallen Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, a shaken Mayor Street said that, although he didn't support the death penalty, the shooting of Cassidy "makes you re-evaluate your beliefs."
Me, I'm thinking that a tidy execution - preceded by an excruciating trial and years of appeals - is actually too good for the coward who shot Cassidy in the head, leaving the father of three fighting for his life on the floor of a Dunkin' Donuts, next to a trash can.
Here's an officer who has given 25 years of his life in service to this city, who has been an exemplary husband, father and friend - and he's left for dead next to a trash can, as the thug who shot him steals his gun before fleeing!
Death by injection is too humane for this animal, regardless of whether Cassidy survives or not. What the guy deserves instead is something as cruel and unusual as what he inflicted.
How's this? Let's lock him in a gymnasium with 150 of Cassidy's family, friends and comrades. And let's permit them to express their feelings, in whatever ways they deem appropriate, about what he did - not just to Cassidy and those who love him. But to the city he and our brave officers are trying so hard to protect.
I know what you're thinking - thank God I don't work in the district attorney's office, right? I agree, believe me. The last thing we need is vigilante justice in a town already devastated by those who mete out punishment as they see fit, whether by bullet or fist.
But I'm sorry. This is just horrifying. Four Philadelphia police officers have been shot in less than six weeks - six if you include the retired Philly cops who, working as armored-car guards, were murdered in early October as they emptied an ATM at the Roosevelt Mall.
The shootings have been brazen, cold-blooded and utterly terrifying.
When our sentries fall, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Yesterday, it was heartbreaking and surreal to see an entire Philadelphia neighborhood under lockdown.
To see a police chopper flying low over cozy rowhouses, a sharpshooter perched in the helicopter's doorway, ready to fire.
To see dozens of grim-faced, heavily armed SWAT cops stampeding up North Broad Street, past the Oak Lane Diner, where many of them grab meals or just stop in to make sure all is well.
Just as Cassidy did yesterday at the Dunkin' Donuts, which sits across the street from the Oak Lane.
"We know so many of the officers," the diner's frightened cashier, Roberta Hampton, told me by phone yesterday, as the cops' frenetic manhunt unfolded outside the restaurant's old-fashioned metal walls. Usually bustling, Hampton said, the diner was utterly empty of the devoted lunch crowd that usually fills the booths, tables and counter.
"Cops work hard; they do their job like everyone else," Hampton said. "But this city is getting crazy. It's scary to think we might not make it home at night, because someone else was too lazy to get off their tails and work hard."
But not too lazy to destroy a good cop and his family. To mock the men and women who risk their lives to keep this city liveable. And to leave us feeling scared, enraged and defeated, all at the same time.
The place we call home has become a war zone, and our protectors its latest targets. *
E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns: