Saturday, December 23, 2017

A Must Read from the Wall Street Journal, by Peggy Noonan, July 13


This week the New York City Police Department buried one of its own, also one of our own. We should put aside a moment to mourn.

The murdered officer was Miosotis Familia, 48, reportedly the youngest of 10 children of Dominican immigrants and the first in her family to attend college. She had three children and cared for her own ailing mother.

She'd been a cop for 12 years. She was one of the people who keep my city of 8.5 million up and operating each day, in both its personal and public spheres. 

She was on the midnight shift in the Bronx on Wednesday, July 5. Her killer, 34-year-old Alexander Bonds, was a lowlife and prison parolee with untreated mental illness. He posted threatening anticop rants on Facebook. 

The night of the murder he walked up to her police vehicle and fired once through the window, shooting Officer Familia in the head. Police shot him dead soon after. Here is NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill at her funeral:

Regular people sign up to be cops. They sign up for this job of protecting strangers knowing the inherent risks. . . . But not one of us ever agreed to be murdered in an act of indefensible hate. Not one of us signed up to never return to our family or loved ones. So where are the demonstrations for this single mom who cared for her elderly mother and her own three children?"

The 4,000 mourners stood and burst into sustained applause. Mr. O'Neill continued: "There is anger and sorrow, but why is there no outrage? Because Miosotis was wearing a uniform? Because it was her job? I simply do not accept that. Miosotis was targeted, ambushed and assassinated. She wasn't given a chance to defend herself. That should matter to every single person who can hear my voice in New York City and beyond." 

It should.

Unnamed but a clear focus of Mr. O'Neill's remarks was the radicalism and rage of the Black Lives Matter movement, coupled with a national media too often willing to paint the police, in any given incident, as guilty until proven innocent. This sets a mood that both excites and inspires the unsteady and unstable.

Mr. O'Neill: "When we demonize a whole group of people, whether that group is defined by race, by religion or by occupation, this is the result. I don't know how else to say it. This was an act of hate, in this case against police officers—the very people who stepped forward and made a promise to protect you day and night." 

We are not paying enough attention to what is happening to the police throughout the country. As this was being written, Newsweek reported the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund claims that the number of officers killed in the line of duty was up 30% for the 12 months ending June 30, compared with the preceding year. 

That number doesn't include Miosotis Familia. The head of the Memorial Fund said: "Officers have been targeted for the job they do, shot and killed, or hit with vehicles." It should be a major, sustained national story when cops are killed for being cops. Yet each incident never gels into a theme. The media caravan moves on. Orwell spoke of forcing inconvenient stories down the memory hole. It is a feature of our age that we now force them down the hole before they've had a chance to become a memory.

Peter Vega, Genesis Villella and Delilah Vega mourn their mother, Officer  Miosotis Familia at the World Changers Church in the Bronx, July 11. Photo by Associated Press


Saturday, December 9, 2017

Former Challenge Staffer Sander Cohen LODD

Deputy Fire Marshal Sander Cohen
FIRE OFFICER/FIRE MARSHAL & LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER BOTH STRUCK AND KILLED WHILE HELPING AT INTERSTATE CRASH SCENE

The Secret List www.FireFighterCloseCalls.com

We regret to pass on that two Law Enforcement officers (Fire Officer and FBI Agent) were struck and killed in the Line of Duty while standing on the shoulder of I-270 in Montgomery County, Maryland as the first arriving to the scene of a traffic crash.

Around 2200 hours one of the officers stopped on I-270 near the single-vehicle crash. He requested assistance and used his car to block the damaged vehicle from oncoming traffic. Both men moved over to the shoulder of the fast lane when a southbound vehicle began to approach them.

The driver of that vehicle swerved to avoid hitting vehicles in one lane and ended up hitting the officers. Both men were thrown over the jersey wall to the northbound side of I-270, where it appears at least one of them was then struck by a northbound vehicle.

One officer died on the scene and the other was transported to Suburban Hospital where he was pronounced dead. The driver and one passenger in the vehicle that struck the men were taken to Suburban Hospital.

A second passenger in that car was taken to Shady Grove Hospital. The driver of the northbound vehicle that struck one of the men reported no injuries.

Montgomery County Fire PIO Pete Piringer said that a Deputy Chief fire marshal and an FBI agent were killed in the crash.

"Sadly, @mcfrs learned this morning of the untimely passing of Sander Cohen".  Cohen was a Lieutenant with the Rockville Volunteer Fire Department and a Deputy Chief with Maryland State Fire Marshal's Office, Maryland State Police.

Police said there is no indication of alcohol involvement in these crashes. The causes of the initial crash remain under investigation. No charges have been filed at this time. Much more to follow.

Once again a tragic reminder of the risk we have when operating on roadways. Our condolences to
the Maryland State Police, the FBI, the Rockville Volunteer Fire Department and the Montgomery County Fire Rescue Department.

Sander was an employee of On•Target 10 years ago and a good friend of my daughter, Brittany.

Monday, December 4, 2017

John Paul II’s Prescient 1995 Letter to Women

From Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal 
© November 30, 2017

He wrote of ‘the long and degrading history . . . of violence against women in the area of sexuality.

Here is something to ground us in the good: Pope John Paul II’s 1995 Letter to Women, sent to the Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing. 

As a document, it has more or less fallen through history’s cracks. But it’s deeply pertinent to this moment and was written with pronounced warmth by a man who before he became a priest hoped to be a playwright. Here is what he said:

You would never be so low as to abuse women if you knew what they are and have been in the history of humanity: “Women have contributed to that history as much as men and, more often than not, they did so in much more difficult conditions. I think particularly of those women who loved culture and art and devoted their lives to them in spite of the fact that they were frequently at a disadvantage” in education and opportunity. 

Women have been “underestimated, ignored and not given credit for their intellectual contributions.” Only a small part of their achievements have been documented, and yet humanity knows that it “owes a debt” to the “great, immense, feminine ‘tradition.’ ” But, John Paul exclaimed, “how many women have been and continue to be valued more for their physical appearance than for their skill, their professionalism, their intellectual abilities, their deep sensitivity; in a word, the very dignity of their being!”