I’ve been thinking about this post for a little while now, but every time I wanted to sit and type it, I kept re-evaluating different ideas on it. Well, the time for fence-sitting is over, so here we go…
Almost two weeks ago, a horrendous crime happened in Philadelphia: an 11-year old girl was grabbed while walking home from school, dragged into an alley, and brutally raped. My mentality about this is to kill the fucker who stole everything from this girl. You can make all the politically-correct euphemisms about virginity and such, but it wasn’t just her first sexual experience that was stolen from her; quite literally, her innocence was erased at the same time as well as her sense of personal safety and, most likely, sanity. This monster couldn’t control himself, so he took a little girl and murdered her sense of self.
If the story ended there, I’d have no problems. They caught the guy, now he’ll go to prison a convicted child-rapist (because, somehow, “pedophile” just doesn’t cut it in this case), and probably be seriously abused or killed while in there: Justice is served. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there… You see, the police put out a picture of the suspect before they found him so the public could help out. No problem with that, right? I mean… the public should help to find persons of interest; it is a good partnership between the community and the police – help them help us, ya know? Yeah… well, a few citizens found this guy, and, instead of calling 911 and alerting the police, they decided to take matters into their own hands.
At least 3 men (one armed with what was described as “a bat or large stick”) chased the suspect down and beat the shit out of him while in full view of a surveillance camera. Again, I think that’s what the guy deserved, BUT he was still a mere suspect at the time… a person of interest. What happens if he wasn’t the right guy? That’s the first thing that bothers me about this. Emotions are high, a little girl was involved, and people want justice: I get that. Unfortunately, no one knew positively if the man being beaten was the man who did this horrendous act! Any number of mistakes could have been made to present the picture of a completely innocent man!!
Next, the police chief said that no charges would be filed on the vigilantes. Okay, this is NOT a slam on the chief, but why not? He stated that his decision was based on heightened emotion in the neighborhood because of this crime, the fact that the man’s injuries were not life-threatening, and that the vigilantes stood down as soon as police arrived. Okay, that’s all well and good, but don’t you think that neglecting to press charges against people taking the law into their own hands is only going to serve to increase vigilantism? “Hey! We can get away with this now!” might be the rallying cry. While I’m all for the community assiting in the protection of the whole, I think this might be taking it a little too far. That’s the second issue.
My last “problem” (and I put that in quotes because the blood-thirsty guy inside me, the one who applauds everything that happened after the original crime, thinks that the piece of shit child-rapist got everything he deserved AND the vigilantes should get statues put up) with this is that the family of the girl held a big party in honor of the vigilantes. Again, this just reinforces this behavior. I’m not saying that if I were in that family’s position (God forbid), that I wouldn’t do everything in my power to move the mountains and pull the sun from the sky for the guys who detained and beat my daughter’s attacker, but it does lead me to believe that people are going to glorify and excuse this behavior in the future, meaning that it might start happening more frequently.
Again… the majority of who I am does not have a problem with it. I’m almost positive that the father of this little girl wishes with every fiber of his being that he was there when those men came upon that asshole because I would wish the same thing were I in his shoes. If someone ever hurt my daughter even close to that, there would be no place on the planet he could hide from me and the things I would do in retribution are unfit for almost any media. I just look at what happened after the initial crime, and I am struck at the recipe for disaster waiting in the wings. I hope I’m wrong!