In the Name of Justice

If you don't think cop killers deserve to die, there's something wrong with you.

by Brian Hickey

When you grow up with a last name like mine, you either get used to being called an assortment of names, or you end up making fast friends with murderous freaks in Finland.

Me? Though better than Phil McCracken, Hickey was more rife for kiddie jokes than most. I'd gladly share a few that were hurled young Brian's way, but they're buried so deep behind my freckle face that they surface only when somebody sings the Mickey Mouse theme (H, I, C ... see you real soon) or Toni Basil somehow gets radio-play (though, in retrospect, being so fine, so fine that you blow minds is pretty solid). I mention this today for two reasons.

First, to explain the change of the little graphic that accompanies Philly Blunt each week. (The art department calls it a "rubric," but I don't know what that means since a few letters seem off, and there's no multicolored cube involved.) There'd long been a little picture of a gun, three bullets and a barrel o' fish sitting amid that week's rant. The point being: Finding someone to rip in Philly is, yep, as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. (Still is.)

But a couple of weeks back, while writing about a boy hero from Mantua who'd gotten lost in the public-welfare system after diming out his drug-dealing dad ["The Forgotten Hero," Oct. 11, 2007], I got to feeling a wee bit hypocritical. This, because the gun was pointing directly at his potential target of a head until our copy editor made the much-appreciated observation. That week, we simply moved the weapon. Last week, we did away with it altogether.

With all the killing and senseless violence both on our streets — issues regularly touched upon here — that imagery felt offensive. Of course, nobody was going to see it and say, "Hey, let's go shoot a pregnant crossing guard in the stomach," but there were principles involved, and they had to be addressed. But what to replace it with?

Luckily, I noticed a copy of thee old Hickey family crest sitting in my dining room. Not all that sure what it means, other than I'm allowed to like Lord of the Dance, but there's also a knight atop a lion. From there, we needed only one tweak: Where there was once a weapon in Sir Hickey's glove, there's now a pencil. Sharp, right?

So that explains that part, but there's more; the second reason to bring up those repressed childhood memories is that I got called a lot of names this past week. And it's all because I believe that an eye should be taken for an eye. (Likewise with teeth.)

In the wake of Officer Chuck Cassidy's cold-blooded assassination, I posted on our staff blog that 1) I hoped Cassidy's co-workers got some alone time with the killer; and 2) that once a killer was convicted, he should be put down like a rabid mutt. A similar response to the Gary Skerski assassination, I said what I meant and I meant what I said. But then, Kumbaya Dam broke. Here's a sampling of the contaminated water that seeped through:

• "It's a bit surprising to see [Al Gonzalez and Karl Rove] blogging for City Paper";

• "If a cop gets killed on the job, that's his/her problem. Too f***ing bad";

• "Irresponsible";

• and my personal favorite, which came from someone so utterly memorable that I had to be told they also work at CP, "You are the product of a notoriously racist and classist city, and it's showing."

Listen, I'm all for a good debate. So here's what ticks me off: All anybody does to counter my stance —that anybody who kills a cop deserves to die — is call me a name, claim that I don't have a right to have an opinion, or condemn the whole capital-punishment system as racist and broken.

Well, that very well may be, which is why I'd rally just as vehemently for it to be fixed so we can properly use, not abolish, it — which capital-punishment foes are trying to accomplish in a sneaky fashion. (If you're for an outright ban, just say so; we'll agree to disagree and move on with life.)

But what nobody can do is provide what I consider an intellectually adequate counter-argument to a two-tiered question: What does the overall picture have to do with the single case? As in, what does somebody getting cleared by DNA evidence in Illinois have to do with the animal who took Cassidy from his family and city?

The system isn't broken when somebody is caught on video, confesses or leaves their DNA all over the mutilated corpse, so why do they deserve mercy when they showed horrific disdain for the rule of law?

So until ye old mudslingers can tackle that one in an adult fashion, remember:

I'm rubber.

You're glue.

So nah nah-nah nah-nah nah.

(hickey@citypaper.net)