June 17
4Repay them for their deeds,
and for their evil work;
repay them for what their hands have done
and bring back on them what they deserve. (Psalms 28:4, The Jesus Bible)
Good morning family! I pray this post finds you all in good health and happiness. I also pray that by the end of this post, you are motivated to be a more powerful participant in keeping the Kingdom.
I just came off the most active rotation on day-shift, working as a Patrol Officer for the City of Savannah. It all started with a kidnapping that resulted in a police pursuit across most of the city. I went three years without having ever hearing a call-out for a kidnapping, but this rotation we responded to two kidnappings, that when all things were said-and-done, we learned they were not actual kidnappings. Then we responded to an actual kidnapping but did not realize what it was until after we had the suspect in custody. That call had myself and the rookie I was training chasing the suspect across a historic cemetery while a poor, unsuspecting family was having a funeral service for a lost loved one just a few hundred meters away.
This crazy rotation culminated with what I considered the most crucial investigation I have participated in. As I recap it, I can only give y’all certain details, for the protection of all those involved.
If y’all recall me saying on this blog in the past, I finally decided to work in law enforcement because of my children. I not only wanted to be trained to protect them better, but I also wanted to make sure that if anything ever happened to them, I would know that the proper investigation would be done to ensure they were either found, or the evil person who harmed them was brought to justice. So crimes against children, in my opinion, are the most serious evils that can be enacted on this side of existence. Well, exactly one week ago, it came to our knowledge that a twelve-year-old had been raped at gun-point by her father, and the scumbag threatened to kill the family when he learned that police had been informed of the evil of his deeds.
There were several concerning things about how the initial reporting of this heinous crime occurred, but that analysis is not the point of this post, which I will get to soon. But back to last week. This rape had occurred in the precinct we worked in, so us as patrol officers, we exhausted every resource available to us to tract down this suspect. We had all the information regarding the vehicle the individual most likely would be driving in, however, he could be in anything at that point. He had made it clear to his wife that he understood what was going to happen to him if authorities located him, and he made it even clearer that he was not going to go to jail. So in our briefings we made sure all us patrol officers, most of whom have less than a year on the streets, that they understood the severity of putting this individual into custody: he was not going to comply. It would most likely be a gunfight, and if it became a barricaded gunman situation, that it would be a SWAT call-out. We had learned the suspect was a US Army veteran with multiple combat deployments and a skilled marksman.
The short of this manhunt is that we found him, with a bullet hole to his chest. He was located less than a mile from his wife’s home, backed into a dead-end cut that made it almost impossible to see the vehicle unless you turned on the road from one specific direction. Before discovering the vehicle, as I actively searched for him, I had this calming feeling that day (last Sunday), and I knew all the way to my core that we were going to find him that day. And we did. Even though all indications pointed to a self-inflicted gunshot wound, we still had to check the boxes and treat it as a possible homicide. As the homicide detectives conducted their investigation, dark clouds had rolled over us and the heavens opened up. That rookie I had mentioned earlier is now cut-loose and was right behind me when we initially made contact with the suspect vehicle. As the rain started coming down, I overheard this young officer ask the homicide detective (and this was completely not the appropriate thing to ask, especially during an active investigation, but this young man has to be reminded often about what is appropriate), “are these tears of joy falling on us?” The detective responded with “I can not answer that question, you’d have to direct it to the big boss upstairs.”
Well, that young officer’s comment made me think about that question, “are the heavens rejoicing because this evil man had taken his life and was no longer living and able to hurt anyone else?” The answer is simple: no the heavens were not crying tears of joy. If there were any tears fallen, they were tears of heartbreak. No matter what the end result was for the father, the poor child had her innocence stolen from the one person on Earth that was meant to protect her from such evils. Her life is forever changed, forever tarnished. The devil had already won, the vehicle the devil had used (the father) in this monstrous act was destroyed and now his soul was banished to the eternal pit of fire (or so we like to believe). There are endless questions that can arise from this about how deep the mercy and grace of Jesus could actually reach, but that is for a different day. For today, I have written enough, and have barely touched on the point of this post, which is this: what can we do to prevent such evil?
I want you to think about that for the day, or the rest of the weekend. I have been trying to complete this post with a 10-month-old crawling all over her grandparents house, which has been an incredible challenge, so I must bring this to a close for today. I plan to be back on here tomorrow, but life happens, so who knows. Just keep that question in mind until next time: what can we do to prevent such evils, once and for all?
Common Sense Reborn 