The Spokane Record

The sad news in Spokane these past few days has been news about the innocent killing of a pastor - green-houseman one evening in the Spokane Valley.  A young sheriff’s deputy was on patrol in an unmarked car looking for prowlers.  He parked in the parking lot of pastor’s green-house.  The pastor came out to investigate — he must have been thinking there was a prowler.  Shortly thereafter, there was a death.  The owner - pastor was dead.  No one knows why.   The shot(s) which killed him were from the gun of the sheriff’s deputy.

The next day (why not that night) The deputy could not come in and explain because he already had planned a vacation.   He did not want to miss it.   The sheriff had approved the vacation ahead of time (ahead of death of the pastor — green-houseman?).  The sheriff did not press the point.

The whole town wants to know what happened. 

Now, the whole town also wants to know why a vacation has more meaning than the need to deal with the tragedy.  That the vacation has taken  precedence over the need to deal with, understand, respect and revere, the tragedy of the event, is more than the human mind can bear.  That the vacation is more important than the need to immediately explain why a beloved soul lost his life is beyond comprehension.  It is more than the human mind can understand.

No doubt there is a tragedy here.  But, now there is the freightening notion that police officials take their jobs so objectively, so clinically, that a vacation is more important than the need for the community to understand and come to terms with the reality of what has happened.

One senses there is a dark movement taking place these days in the evolution of our community.  I wish it were that I that I am wrong.  But, I think not.

Who would take a vacation when he had just been involved in the death of another human being?  When the bullet(s) from his gun had caused the death of an innocent soul!  My Lord, what are we coming to!

What are we becoming?  Today, there is this news of the death of Salvation Army worker, Major Philip Wise, in front of his three small children?  The killer may very well be a very bad man.  But, it seems  there are lot of bad men these days.  More than I remember.  I think something else is happening.  Something is happening here at home, in our cities and towns, in our neighborhoods. Perhaps, before we think we can help others with our “guns and drones” and “our ideals” it may be a good idea to see how we can help ourselves.

Bristol Palin’s erstwhile possible step-mother is going to jail.  Spokesman-Review. 

Think of it! We live in a society which imposes grave burdens upon ourselves by putting people in prison for having prescription drugs in their possession. What is the great crime here? (1) not having persmission to have the drugs; 2) wanting to sell the drugs; (3) using the drugs — have you ever used oxycontin? — gives you a slight high, constipates you and causes you to become interested in those colon clease advertisements you see in your email box daily; (4) or (this is it) violation of the ghosts of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

For this the government is going to expend, let us say, at least $120,000 to keep the poor woman in jail for two years. My, oh my!

Also, note, there is a budget issue here.  How, pray tell, are we going to finance the necessities of government functions when we use precious resources to put people in jail who are not a threat to society.

From atop the American Legion Building in downtown Spokane from about 2002 to 2008 there is this news:  Scott Shane, 2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11’s Wake, New York Times, August 11, 2009.

What did Spokane do during the recent war?  Some of us instructed others of our country in the art of terror and crimes of illegal interrogation.  We did this in the name of good.   We practiced the principle that the “end justifies the means.”   The principle of the “judgment of power.”  We are all tough guys these days!

One is somehow reminded of the towns where the good people lived which were next to the concentration camps and mass murder factories in Germany and Germany occupeid Eastern Europe during World War II — Dachau, near Dachau,  Auschwitz-Birkenau, near Oswiecim, Treblinka, near Małkinia Górna, Chelmo, near Chełmno nad Nerem, Buchenwald, near Weimar, Bergan-Belsen, near Belsen, Flossenburg, near Bayreuth, and the list of camps and towns goes on and on.  A tribute to the divinity of man?

In these towns, the people looked up to the people who ran the camps, looked up to them because of their power, their military bearing, their great self-confidence and authority, their high connections.  So they did, just as the people of Spokane over the last few years looked up to doctors [sic] Mitchell and Jessen and were in some awe of their secret operations atop the American Legion Building in downtown Spokane.

Tomorrow it will be the third anniversary of the death of Jo Ellen Savage at the River Park Square Parking Garage on April 6, 2006.  Her car hit a “spandrel”, the spandrel broke, her car with Mrs. Savage at the wheel fell serveral stories to the deck of the entrance exit ramp below.  She did not die immediately, she died trapped in her car.

Spokane Prosecutor Tucker, a man who recently charged a young mother for manslaughter in the death of her child because she was negligent in the way in which she secured the child’s car seat, announced that he did not have enough evidence to file charges against anyone for the death of Mrs. Savage. 

In the past, several of the spandrels failed when a car hit them, tapped them.  Luckily, no one was injured.  Despite this knowledge, despite this history, despite the fact that the owners of the garage knew this, Mr. Tucker did not think he had a case.  The man is a coward, and a lousy prosecuting attorney.

There will be another spandrel failure and perhaps another death.  There will be more blood on the hands of someone.  This time, the number of people responsible will expand considerably.  More of the upper echelons of Spokane wll be responsible.  It is only a matter of time.

Innocent people have been murdered from coast to coast in the USA.  Fourteen in New York state, 3 police officers in Pennsylvania, 5 children in Graham, Washington.  In each case the murders were done by relatively young men who were not getting from life that which they thought they wanted.  People will rail against the men, they will want their heads, in two instances, the perpetrators have already accomplished that.  So there is not much which can be done to “resolve” the cause of the situation.

What is really happenng?  Young men, relatively speaking, express anger and act to destroy.  Where does this come from?  It is human nature.  The question for us is how do we stop it.  How do we act as a culture to keep this sort of thing from happening?