 |
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
 |
Heroism's face often turns ugly for police
© St. Petersburg Times, The amazing thing is that this guy, a kid's uncle, wrestles a 7-foot bull shark to the shore last Friday up in the Panhandle, a 200-pound shark that has just torn off his nephew's arm, throwing that giant slap-thrashing fish up onto the sand so that a park ranger can shoot it in the head, and they prop open the mouth with a police baton and reach in and pull out the kid's arm so it can be reattached. Oh, man. Then, the uncle and his wife are tying off the kid's limbs with beach towels as tourniquets -- beach towels! -- and administering CPR. And the uncle calls 911 and talks to the dispatcher to make sure help is on the way. And the dispatcher says, "Everybody is on the way, okay?" And the uncle finishes the call by telling the dispatcher, "Okay, thank you." See, he remembers to say thank you. Two weeks ago, a woman is swimming at a lake in Pasco County, and suddenly she gets jerked under the water, one second she's there and the next she's not, just like, as her husband put it, "one of the scenes out of Jaws." So this is what he does, he starts fighting it and kicking it, whatever that thing is in the water, which turns out to be a 9-foot, 8-inch, 350-pound alligator, until it lets his wife go. This was an entirely impressive feat, not diminished even by the fact that they later called a news conference to say they were trying to find somebody to sue. Two weeks before that, a guy's car gets hit on the Howard Frankland Bridge, plunges over the side, and the guy is thrown out of his car and is floating away in Tampa Bay. So this car with two teenage lifeguards pulls up and they see his body floating away and they talk about jumping in. A woman comes running up with a little pink kiddie-toy inner tube. One of the lifeguards takes it without any hesitation and jumps off the bridge into Tampa Bay. He can't see because the water is rough and it's dark and so he relies on shouts from the bridge above for direction to the victim's body. The victim turns out to be dead, but the kid cradles him for the next 45 minutes, at first alone and then with a police diver. On Tuesday they buried a Tampa police officer named Lois Marrero. She was shot and killed while she was chasing a pair of bank robbers. The guy shot her in a parking lot and she didn't stand a chance, as if in an ambush -- if not planned then that's the way it worked out. She didn't get to draw; they took her gun as she lay on the ground. Can we say from these stories what heroism is? The shark-wrestling uncle surely is a hero. So is the alligator-fighting husband, the bridge-jumping lifeguard. So was the guy from Jacksonville who gave his life last weekend trying to save a kid from a riptide. The rest of us hear about these people with awe and ask ourselves silently: Given the same split-second, would I do the same? Could I? Here is one difference, though. Nobody wakes up in the morning saying, "Today I might have to wrestle a bull shark, or save my beloved from an alligator, or jump off a bridge." But every police officer, every day, goes to work knowing what might be. The fact that police take on this risk does not mean that they catch any special breaks, either, and this is not to say they should. Their decisions are second-guessed. Their powers are constantly debated, as they should be. The police know these hard political facts very well. Do you know what would have happened had Lois Marrero shot and killed the bad guy, instead of the other tragic way around? Today she would be suspended, getting questioned. Maybe, as often happens, some citizen would be claiming that he saw it all and that she used too much force. That's how the world works for police officers. It does not seem too maudlin, or too worshipful, to say to each of them this morning, thank you. - You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
|
Times columns today Howard Troxler Robert Trigaux Bill Maxwell Ernest Hooper From the Times Metro desk Howard Troxler |
