Friday, February 1, 2013

In a Hole

Stipulated:

The tragedy unfolding is Alabama is horrible.  It is anyone's nightmare, especially a parent's, to imagine their child, let alone a 5 year old (again...) in harm's way.  And kidnapped and held hostage by an alleged murderer in an underground bunker.  Let me speak for everybody when I say...OH MY GOD!!!

The media is everywhere...again...and we are treated to up to the minute information about what is happening.

Or what is not happening, in this case.  Unless you're talking about crayons.  Yeah...that's news...

I was struck (punditspeak for "I noticed") by the images of hundreds of heavily armed members of all of the police forces imaginable.  SWAT teams, state police, local police, the FBI.  They are all there as well as correspondents from all of the networks and then some.  Sandy Hook all over again.  You'd think, by the way they act, that they were addicted to tragedy.

But why so many police?  The reports are that there is one guy...one...holding a child hostage in a confined, underground, space and there is, so far, one person dead, the school bus driver.

The guy is in a box underground.  They know where he is.  He couldn't get out, if he tried, without going past the authorities.

You only need two guys at the door, at most.  One to guard the door and shoot the guy if he tries anything funny and one guy to back up the first guy.  Ok...I'll give you three guys.  One extra to be there if numbers one or two have to go to the bathroom or something.

I am, by no means taking this event lightly.  It's a very important and fragile situation.  I feel awful for the little boy's family and for the bus driver's family.  And for the gunman's family who love him and are concerned for his welfare.  The powers that be are in charge and, for the time being, in control and are acting with the utmost professionalism and care.

But why do we need so much man power?  The situation reminds me of the famous "Alice's Restaurant", Arlo Guthrie's epic ode to the social upset of the Sixties.

Officer Obie "had two 8 x 10, color, glossy photographs with circles and arrows on the back of each one explaining what each one was..."

And the police of Stockbridge, a small town in Western Massachusetts, not used to much excitement, had dragged out all sorts of police equipment that they normally never got to use, in order to properly investigate the charge of "litterin'" that had been leveled against the long haired, hippie Mr. Guthrie.

That appears to be what's happening in Midland City. 

To repeat.  There's one guy holed up in a small underground bunker with one 5 year old hostage...surrounded by the cops.

Maybe all of the excess, highly trained and over-armed manpower could be better deployed fighting other crimes or, at the very least, guarding Alabama's rural schools.

If a retired veteran can allegedly kill a school bus driver and take a little boy hostage at gunpoint then maybe there's another lunatic lurking in the Alabama woods waiting to storm a school and kill a group of children for no apparent reason.

You say you want armed guards at schools.  You have them. So use them.  Leave one at the bunker and put the others in places where they can do more good.

And they could have the red jello at the schools.  It ain't a doughnut but it ain't half bad neither...




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