Needless Death

Today in Seattle a memorial service was held for officer Timothy Brenton of the Seattle Police Force. Now I know that I have sometimes been critical of speed traps in my blog, but my criticisms of police departments in general is limited only to needless speed traps. I do have respect for their position and this was an egregiously needless death. Officer Brenton and his partner, a woman and trainee, were parked on a quiet street reviewing some paperwork on Halloween. The trainee saw, out of the corner of her eye, a car start to pull up and she sensed trouble. She ducked and yelled for officer Brenton to do the same. Unfortunately, he was too late, as the car drove by they let out a spray of bullets into the police cruiser and officer Brenton was killed. It was obvious that the driver had wanted to kill both police officers, but only got one that day. Brenton was a young officer with two small children that are now fatherless because of this senseless act of violence. No one should die this way.



My hope is that they will catch whoever did this. I have another hope as well and that is that the media will not sensationalize the perpetrator. Undoubtedly this is too much to expect, as the media sensationalizes everything. In this case, I really don't want to hear about the suspect's background, race, religion, or history of problems with the police. I would like for him to be caught, tried and found guilty, and put to death as quickly as possible. I frankly don't even want to know his name. There is no excuse for this, no excuse at all.