Blue Line Flags Are Cheap, Cops Are Goddamn Expensive
Supporting law enforcement in the wake of a policeman’s brutal on-duty murder
Supporting law enforcement in the wake of a policeman’s brutal on-duty murder
I’ve never been enthusiastic about living in Delmar, that’s not a secret, but I’m writing this with a heavy heart lightened only by a swelling pride in my town’s response to tragedy. As I write this there are literally about 1,000 people in the ballpark that abuts my backyard.
They’re holding a fundraising event for a dead policeman’s family. Music, concessions, a memorial softball tournament, and a 50/50 raffle. The roads are thick with cars, pickup trucks, and motorcycles all flying the problematic Blue Line flag.
These are people who want with all their heart to help the officer’s family and show solidarity with the police. While I am not among them, I am overcome with a deep sadness at the loss and a simmering rage at the manner of death.
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Corporal Keith Heacook was beaten to death answering a home invasion call. The man who killed him had been on something of a spree, beating an old couple in a nearby apartment before moving on to another unit.
Details in the press release were sketchy about the beginning of the confrontation but graphic about its conclusion: the murderer allegedly stomped the police officer to death.
One theory about why we commit murder at so much higher a rate than any other species is, since humans aren’t born with claws or fangs, we don’t have the same disposition against killing members of our own species that, say, wolves do.
Practically speaking, we’re about 10 flipped houses away from being mostly owned by landlords and low-income-housing conglomerates.
Killing a person with one’s bare hands is so difficult that it ought to be enough to all but eliminate murder, evolutionarily. I think of it that way often. It takes a particular kind of fear or cruelty to kill without a weapon. Or maybe the right kind of drugs, which has been suggested to be the case here.
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The reporting has been, and must be, insufficient and oblique. No news outlet covers the Delmar Police Department. Hell, no one covers Delmar. Like many if not most small rural American towns there’s a gossip network that works just as well as a newspaper, and we seem to prefer it that way.
Facebook bickering is the arbiter of truth when it comes to town politics. Unfortunately, that means we won’t learn from this tragedy.
The salient facts, according to the police, are that the officer was responding to a call alone and, when he didn’t check in after too long, police from other agencies followed up and discovered the murder. Heacook was the only officer on duty.
Delmar has several assault vehicles donated by the military, but only one cop on duty overnight. This actually is an improvement. When I first moved here we had no police overnight or on Sundays. As any small-town mayor will tell you, cops are goddamn expensive.
In fact, it could be that some of the same good, honest, and caring people who were in the streets yesterday were among the people who complained about the government waste associated with having a full-time overnight officer when we finally added that luxury.
More likely, though, it was just a noisy few. What you need to know about Delmar is that only about half of the homes are owned by residents, the rest are rentals. The national average is something closer to a 65/35 split.
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Practically speaking, we’re about 10 flipped houses away from being mostly owned by landlords and low-income-housing conglomerates. Almost by definition, that means the public good always will be sublimated to return on investment.
Delmar’s elected officials (we have no leaders) aren’t up to a challenge like this. They’re good at approving zoning variances for developers and keeping taxes improbably low (I pay about $900 per year), but taking a hard look at whether it would be worth an extra quarter-million dollars to keep a cop from being beaten to death is beyond their ability to reason. Or at least it was until recently.
At first blush, this might seem to be about blame. I don’t have any to level, though I’m sure there will be the expected (and maybe even necessary) revision of protocols. I need to be very clear here. There is only one person who is blameworthy in this situation and that is the man who overrode his genetic pre-disposition and beat another human being to death without mercy. The end.
But on Monday morning the fundraising carnival will be over, and the grieving family will have the comfort of having seen the community’s immediate and heartfelt response. I have zero doubt that the residents will continue to honor and support the Heacooks. Whether the taxpayers will be generous if asked to bear the burden of paying for more than one full-time cop is another question altogether.
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A little more than a year ago, Commissioner Donald Scholl used the town’s official Facebook page to denounce the police department’s efforts to negotiate in good faith.
Scholl claimed the cops were being disingenuous when they went to the residents to ask for support in enacting a proposed arbitration clause. The police asked the town to submit to binding arbitration in the case of contract disputes.
For example, imagine a completely hypothetical scenario where the police knew there was a real safety risk and wanted at least two officers working overnight but the town commission decided it wasn’t worth the money. If that were ever the case, the cops could request that an impartial party evaluate both arguments and make a final ruling.
I supported the police in their efforts because for small town police to make that kind of public request suggested an emergency. Cops don’t directly ask the people for anything for themselves. Ever.
They’ll ask for toys at Christmas or donations for food drives, but the fact that they felt they had to go door-to-door begging for public support disgusted me. Disgusts me.
And this is kind of where my sadness turns to rage. I have a long and involved record of questioning police tactics, particularly on the Eastern Shore where our towns see law enforcement more as a revenue-generating arm than a potential civic good.
That said, I respect police as professionals and as experts in public safety.
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Scholl argued that the taxpayers shouldn’t be forced into complying with an expert’s assessment. He didn’t say “residents.” Remember, 49 percent of the population doesn’t pay taxes directly, but landlords and housing corporations follow this kind of thing very closely.
It’s not about blame here so much as the disconnect between what we say we value and what we actually value. While I don’t know how the taxpayers feel about the murder, I know that the residents were horrified by the violence. I know that the residents donated a supreme amount of time and coordinated the kind of monumental response reserved for the Hallmark Channel but in real life. They care. They are very sad. I care. I am very sad.
As a town, we bet that nothing bad would ever happen on the overnight shift in our sleepy little burg that couldn’t be handled by one cop. On April 25, at a little after five in the morning, as Corporal Keith Heacook ended his watch, we lost that bet.
Within our larger national dialogue about the function of a police force is the terrible secret that we would rather give them pretend respect than compensation or support. Blue Line flags are cheap, building a safe and equitable public safety infrastructure is goddamn expensive. Nothing about the solution will be easy, but if we continue to approach it as taxpayers rather than as residents we’ve already come as far as we can go.
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Tony Russo is a journalist and author of “Dragged Into the Light: Truthers, Reptilians, Super Soldiers, and Death Inside an Online Cult.” Subscribe to his Bagel Manifesto here.