By Howard Troxler
St. Petersburg Times
ST PETERSBURG, Fla. — It seems impossible, upon hearing the news, to have had any other thought except:
Oh God, not again.
Insanity. Madness.
It does not matter to ask, “What was this 16-year-old thinking?”
Who knows? Who cares? Maybe he shot to kill. Maybe he shot wildly thinking he could somehow get away. Maybe he had played too many bang-bang video games. Maybe he thought it was what a tough guy was supposed to do. Maybe he was in a blind 16-year-old panic. Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all.
Who cares? What matters is that a third St. Petersburg police officer is dead in the span of less than a month. The fact that the accused shooter is a high school student with a couple of arrests on his record, and not a 39-year-old hardened violent felon, does not provide any comfort at all.
Officers Jeffrey Yaslowitz and Tom Baitinger had died 28 days before in a shootout with a desperate fugitive holed up in an attic - a highly tactical and highly unusual event. On the other hand, the events leading to David Crawford’s death started with the report of ... a prowler.
A prowler. A 16-year-old hanging around buildings carrying a brick. How many of these calls do police answer every night? How many in a 25-year career?
Maybe as many as the number of routine traffic stops that Tampa Officers Jeffrey Kocab and David Curtis had made before meeting Dontae Morris last summer.
Or maybe, for Crawford, as many as the number of domestic violence calls he had made during his career, which he was said to be very good at handling. You couldn’t pay most folks enough to do that job, either.
A routine call. A prowler with a brick. What happens if he doesn’t shoot? What’s the worst outcome for him? Do they search him, find the gun, arrest him? So what? A gun possession to go on his juvenile record.
As compared to the rest of his life in prison. From age 16 onward. Not only is one life tragically finished, but another is ruined forever. Not that many people would have much sympathy.
Officers Yaslowitz and Baitinger were the first to die in the line of duty in St. Petersburg since 1980. But there had been others around Florida in the previous months. There have been an unusual number around the nation this year, too. It is easy to feel that something is happening, changing beneath our feet.
Now a third murder of a St. Petersburg officer has occurred in a month’s time, and the feeling is even stronger. Over the past couple of days, I’ve heard or seen many people declare that the City Is Out of Control.
I don’t know. If this were the early 1980s and systematic gang violence against police was breaking out everywhere, it would be clear. If every one of these was the same thing, it would be obvious. But Hydra Lacy in the attic and then this a month later? A freakish coincidence? Or is there some deeper link between them? People will, of course, advance their theories about the degeneration of society.
It is a terrible time for the city. For the love of everything holy, may the next kid see this and not buy the gun. May he not carry it that night. May he never pull the trigger. May he miss if he does. May the police take him safely. May the police go through a day, a month, a year, a lifetime, without this happening again. God bless them and keep them. The rest of us, too.
Copyright 2011 Times Publishing Company