Consequences

I'm pretty sure that when Indianapolis Metropolitcan Police Officer Rod Bradway put on his body armor and uniform yesterday to head out to his overnight shift, he didn't have a thought about not coming home.  But he didn't.  He was shot and killed by a man who was attacking a woman in an apartment.  It's a big deal in Indy.  That's all the news is about today--and rightly so. 

All of the info isn't out yet.  Suffice it to say that the other police with him were able to return fire, and the perpetrator was also killed.  The "perp" had a record, but mostly just for drug charges.  He wasn't known as a violent killer, but that's what he became.  So here I am, wondering just what goes on in the mind of someone committing a violent act?  Often, we just don't know because the criminal dies with the act.  Suicide by Police?  If the man wanted to die, he could have taken care of that without killing a policeman.

My good friend Dr. Phil frequently asks people he is trying to help what they predict the results will be if they continue to behave a certain way.  Interesting thought!  When people are misbehaving, are they actually thinking about the consequences of what they are doing?  Do they truly believe they won't get caught?  Or, if they get caught, do they expect to be forgiven?  If what they have done to others were visited upon them, would/could they be willing to get back what they gave out?  I wish I knew!

John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, was a Southern sympathizer and imagined himself to be a saviour of the nation when he killed the President.  Imagine his shock and surprise to find himself being hunted down like a dog (and eventually killed).  Most "perps" just throw themselves into the court system and hope for better treatment than they gave their victims.  I actually have a tiny little bit of respect for Timothy McVeigh and John Mohammad who denied appeals and let the system exact its punishment quickly.

I'm not 100% sure that people who commit these acts are crazy.  Some clearly are, like the dude who kidnapped and kept Kaycee Dugard for ten years...or the one who kidnapped and kept Elizabeth Smart.  Some know they are but do nothing about it, like the dude who kidnapped and kept three women for at least that long, then told the court he wasn't a "monster"--just sick--and hanged himself in his jail cell.  Others believe that the people they killed, tortured, whatever, deserved to die and that they were justified--and any innocent parties that were affected were just "collateral damage".   Are the rest just the result of their raising???  Do we blame the parents?  And who else??

Sometimes, these performers of evil deeds just behave like cornered animals.  You hear that a lot about dogs that attack people--they were "just doing what Nature programmed them to do".  So, is that it?  Are we homo sapiens nothing more than the rest of animalia, and nothing higher-functioning can be expected of us?  It would seem so.  And it makes me very, very sad.