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(Prime Time Crime exclusive March 9th, 2005) |
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A cop killer and his accomplice |
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I was in the lounge at the Calgary airport when I got the first call of a shooting in Mayerthorpe. Initial indications were there may have been two RCMP members shot and possibly as many as six. Details were sketchy, but every call and email message provided a little snippet of information that painted a growing, grimmer picture. |
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When I deplaned in Vancouver and checked my Blackberry, the full horror of the tragedy in Mayerthorpe was evident. It was a massacre. Four junior members of the RCMP, with a total of 12 years combined experience, lay dead. |
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The news stunned this country. I received emails from as far flung places as Tennessee and Norway, from police officers expressing their sadness and trying to understand how this could have happened. |
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How indeed? |
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There has been a litany of people using the deaths of the officers to further their own pet personal or political causes. One of the blindly stupid lines of questionable thought emanated from the ‘legalize pot’ crowd. “Those officers would still be alive if pot were legal” went the argument. The naiveté of this argument hardly bears analysis. |
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I’ve got to admit I do not understand the potheads. They say prohibition is the reason for the black market and if we legalize marijuana we will eliminate the black market. |
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In the same breath, these peace loving, hand-wringing, potheads applaud gun control and that particular prohibition without a word about the proliferation of illegal guns on the black market. Which I might add, seems likely had a great more to do with the Mounties’ deaths than marijuana. |
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One prohibition is bad because it doesn’t suit their political view, but the other is good. The hypocrisy drips from their commentary. The criminalization, de-criminalization or the legalization of marijuana had absolutely nothing to do with why these members died. Others have tried to blame the RCMP because the members were so junior. I don’t accept that. |
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I joined the RCMP a month after my 19th birthday. That was not atypical then. The RCMP trained me well. Six months later I was part of a squad responsible for the well-being of the Prime Minister. Less than a year later, at 20, I was on patrol by myself in the City of Langley. |
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At 21, I worked my first homicide. At 22, I’d been seconded to CLEU, working a major heroin conspiracy. At that time I had a grand total of three years experience, less than two of the members killed by James Roszko. |
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Ah yes, the killer, the one who was actually responsible for the cold-blooded murder of four RCMP officers. James Roszko, an evil, disturbed, violent, deviant of a man. He did it. He planned it. He concealed himself and waited for the right time and he murdered four RCMP members in their prime, men who were proud to serve the country that refused to jail this freak. |
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But he had an accomplice. And, I am not talking about someone who might have driven him the 20 kms from where his truck was found. No, I am talking about the rampant liberalization of this country. Where we have created a system that refuses to recognize that true evil exists. A faux liberal society that thinks everyone can be rehabilitated if you try over and over and over and over again. They argue against the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule but won’t stand up for 50 or 60 or seventy-three strikes and you’re out. |
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One that thinks someone who is supposed to be in prison is “in custody” if he or she is “serving their sentence in the community.” One that has decided the privacy rights of criminals outweigh the government’s first and primary duty, to protect the citizenry. A system that has allowed those who dine in the fetid, legal trough to trump common sense at every turn. |
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One which teaches our kids that historical, societal norms are some type of “phobia” and drugs are somehow good, yet tobacco is bad because it has business behind it making (gasp) profits. I may have missed something, but aren’t all drugs bad? |
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Yes, the late-but-not lamented James Roszko is directly responsible for the killing of four young police officers. But he had several decades of hand-wringing, social engineering, liberal help. |
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And four good young men are dead because of it. |
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-30- |
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