Even a Worthless Check Has Its Price

You don't necessarily think of people who pass bum checks as being especially dangerous. Tampa Police Officer David Curtis, 31, had a hunch that Dontae Morris might be, though. At 2:30am this morning, Officer Curtis stopped a red 1994 Toyota Camry driven by Cortnee Brantley because it had no visible license plate.

Dontae Morris was in the passenger's seat. When Officer Curtis entered Dontae Morris' name into the computer database, it showed that he had a misdemeanor warrant for "writing a worthless check." Before pulling Morris out of the vehicle, Officer Curtis called for another officer to assist him.

Safety in numbers, you know.

Officer Jeffrey Kocab, also 31 years of age, rolled up a minute or so later.

A minute or so after that, both officers lay bleeding in the street. Jeffrey Kocab died in that street. David Curtis passed away hours later on the operating table as doctors tried in vain to save his young life, leaving his wife a widow, and his four young children without their father.

Jeffrey Kocab's newly-minted widow is nine months pregnant.

Cortnee Brantley has been arrested. Hopefully, by the time this blog is posted—hopefully by the time I finish this sentence, Dontae Morris will be apprehended. Maybe he will be killed in a shootout with Tampa Police, and that would be okay by me. Not that he is worth the cost of the bullet that would take him out, let alone the cost of trying him before a judge and jury, and keeping him in prison for the rest of his life, or having the state take his life. Really, whatever happens to Dontae Morris is almost irrelevant, so long as he is caught and nobody else gets hurt. It is almost irrelevant because he, like the check he passed that got this whole ball of death and mayhem rolling, is worthless.

Worthless.

Soon Tampa will be flooded with officers from all over the country who will come to say goodbye to these two men most of them have never met. There will be covered badges and white gloves and coronets blaring and bagpipes bleating and widows sobbing. Another big show for the cameras. The procession was five miles long, they'll say.

Also, worthless.

I know-- that's very harsh, but I've been to plenty of police funerals over the years and, well, you get hardened to the spectacle. You start asking questions.

What will become of these two young women after the pageantry subsides and the ranks disperse?

Who will help David Curtis’ widow raise four children?

Who will help Jeffrey Kocab’s widow teach their baby about who its daddy was?

Who will help the first Tampa police officers who responded to the “officer down” call cope with the trauma of seeing two of their friends sprawled out in the street, the life pouring from their bodies?

An eyewitness said that Curtis and Kocab were on their backs, lying arm-in-arm in the street. How do you begin to process seeing that? Where do you begin?

I don’t know.

I don’t know what makes someone go from passing a worthless check one day to shooting two police officers in the head at 2:30 in the morning on another day. I don’t understand how that happens. I don’t understand the thought process, or lack of thought process, and I don’t understand where these two families go from here. I don’t understand what Curtis and Kocab’s coworkers do to keep from going insane and shooting everything in sight and crying in their coffees.

They say it’s stupid to throw money at a problem, but that’s what I’m going to do, because I don’t know how to do anything else. There’s a woman in Tampa who’s going to give birth any day now, and her husband’s been ripped from her life. There’s another woman who’s suddenly raising four children on her own. I won’t be in Tampa in my old EMT uniform with white gloves on, but my check, however meager, is on its way.

I hope these women— these broken women, and these families, these shattered, bewildered, stricken families, can count on yours, too.

Fallen Officers' Memorial Fund
c/o Tampa Police Department
411 N. Franklin St.
Tampa FL 33602

It won't be just another worthless check. I promise.

Tongue-Tied in Oakland

I don't know what to say about the cop-killings in Oakland, but I feel compelled to say something.

It's expected of me, law enforcement advocate and supporter that I am. You knew it was coming. You knew it was time for another sad blogpost, one that would not make you giggle or titter, or comment. A sad one. As it says on the banner a'top "My Masonic Apron," this is a sometimes sad place.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, here we are. It's time to put a strip of black over the badge. It's time for the white gloves. It's time to acknowledge a sacrifice greater than ourselves.

They're saying a lot of things in Oakland this morning, and much of what they're saying has to do with the killer. They say that he was "frustrated with the parole system." They say that he was "trying to better himself." They say that he "wasn't being treated right." They say that he "wanted to get rehabilitated and to find a job."

Well. That's what they say anyway. People say a lot of things that don't make any sense when they're upset, and Lovelle Mixon's family has every right to be upset over the blood that this man spilt in Oakland on March the 21st, 2009.

I just don't understand how arming yourself with an assault rifle is a logical component of a plan to "better yourself." Maybe one of Lovelle Mixon's family members can explain that to the people of Oakland or, better yet, to the family members of the deceased officers.

You know-- this isn't what I want to say. This is coming out all wrong. I'm sorry. Let me try again.

---------------------------

It is a rarity when I am at a loss for words. This is one of those times. I felt sure that I could sit down at the computer this morning and just start clicking away, and that, as usual, something cogent and passionate would pour out, but I'm not getting anything. Maybe I'm just spent. Maybe all the death and despair of Philadelphia has bled me dry, and has disabled me to the point where I cannot respond to what has happened 3,000 miles away. 3 dead cops, one brain dead-- a police department in shambles and a city in fear and despair because some fucking bastard was "frustrated with the parole system?"

How, exactly, do you respond to that?

What do you say?

Someone wrote a comment on the Oakland Tribune's website that said, "They all got what they deserved. Everybody knows cops are brutish thugs."

And how, exactly, do you respond to that?

What do you say?

Here's what I have to say personally, and it's nothing that I can say in any commentary or any editorial or any newspaper: if this tragedy doesn't move you in some way-- if it doesn't make you see that the criminal element of this society has effortless access to a plethora of guns that they are unafraid to use, if this doesn't give you a pang of guilt for every "cop-with-a-donut" joke you've unthinkingly made, if this bloodbath doesn't give you a moment's pause: then I guess I just don't know what to say to you.

I guess I'm just tired. Tired of the violence and the meaningless words that follow afterwards, from them, from me, from the governors and the mayors and the presidents. From everybody. I'm just so fucking tired of it.

So, go on. Play your bagpipes. Write your hateful, spiteful comments to the newspapers, and your supportive ones, too. Send your flowers. Lower your flags. Cross your breast.

Just get on with it.