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Inmates are running the asylum. A guy here says we need to police ourselves, can’t trust cops.
Who is this guy?
Don’t know. Some guy Thomas knew. No one here is happy with him or the police-free zone. Lots of fear. Guys I think are just thugs are walking around calling themselves security. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so serious.
Danni didn’t know what to say. After a few minutes Natasha texted again.
I’m organizing a petition to the mayor. We want our police back. Pray she’ll listen.
I will. Be careful, Natasha.
Police-free zone. The whole world had gone crazy.
Anger vibrated through her, as hot and raging as when she’d learned the rock thrower would not face consequences. Gabe was a good investigator. Jess was lucky to have him in the mix. But this should not even be happening.
Her own investigator mind clicked in and she began a mental checklist of everything required in a murder investigation. Marrs and Diamond were the homicide cops assigned, and Danni liked them both. But she could admit to herself that they were ready to retire and perhaps not as forward-thinking as they should be. From all she’d read, this shooting was a real mystery; it wasn’t gang related or domestic violence or road rage or anything obvious. The only obvious thing about the situation was someone wanted it to look as if Jess killed Johnston.
She couldn’t ignore the elephant in the room. Danni would never wish death on anyone, but with Thomas dead, would things actually calm down? If so, the tragedy might have a silver lining. Johnston being gone certainly relieved a little bit of the pressure on the PD. The rioters no longer had a high-profile leader giving them marching orders. Would Marrs and Diamond go easy because it was Thomas? The thought was something Danni rejected with every fiber of her soul. Her father had drummed it into her head.
“Lady Justice is blindfolded for a reason. Justice is for everyone or it’s for no one. As soon as we start deciding who deserves what and why, we’ve stepped out of uniform and crossed a line.”
He’d given her the lecture after a police officer was fired for dispensing street justice to a suspected rapist. The man had been released on a technicality. The officer ran across him off duty and beat him senseless.
Danni had pushed back a bit, talking about how unfair the release was to the victim.
“Where was her justice?”
“Danni, we work hard to get it right the first time. We investigate and make sure everything is done right so technicalities don’t apply. The release of the rapist outraged me as much as anyone. Such a decision makes our job harder, but it is not license to compound one wrong with another. People hate cops who work by their own rules; it creates problems for all of us who want to do right.”
He then said something Danni had learned was true and one of the hardest things to accept as a police officer.
“Ten lawyers will break the law and go to prison, but people don’t riot and say, ‘Kill all the lawyers.’ Ten doctors will break the law and lose their licenses, and no one will organize a protest in front of a doctor’s office. But one cop does something people perceive as wrong and here come the mobs. That’s the way it is. You don’t cry about it; you just do your job. The Bible says, ‘Reject every kind of evil.’ That applies doubly to police officers.”
Am I crying about it?Danni asked herself. For the first time she could ever remember, she didn’t want to go to work. Even to help Jess. She didn’t want to be a target for hate.
Let others get the hate stares, have doors slammed in their faces. I’ve served my time. Jess will be cleared—he must be. They can prove the video was fake. The chief is just waiting for things to calm down.
She shut down her computer and worked to forget what she’d read. She could tell her mother her decision to retire was an informed one.
