Re: Despite news, Tacoma's not a haven for criminals
- From: <crosem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:48:31 GMT
I don't much care for the flip attitude of this writer. These crimes are
serious matters, and broke the hearts of many of his readers. It's really
not a joking matter for a family newspaper.
<earthage2002@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1133282632.515145.205000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/columnists/story/5360162p-4850598c.html
> Despite news, Tacoma's not a haven for criminals
> PATRICK O'CALLAHAN;
> THE Tacoma NEWS TRIBUNE
> Published: November 27th, 2005 02:30 AM
>
> The Valentine's Day massacre did not happen in Tacoma.
>
> Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't from Tacoma.
>
> The Lindbergh baby was neither kidnapped nor murdered in Tacoma.
>
> Got that straight? Not every sensational crime committed in the United
> States has a Tacoma connection.
>
> It just feels like it sometimes.
>
> What is it about Tacoma's celebrity criminals? Do these guys hire
> talent from Madison Avenue to advise them on how to make the biggest
> possible splash when they engage in murder and mayhem?
>
> They aren't content with simply shooting or stabbing innocent people.
> Garden-variety murders or assaults won't do. They have to act out
> their dark impulses in such weird or spectacular ways that the whole
> country takes note and connects them with Tacoma, the fine city I am
> truly proud to call my home.
>
> I'm thinking, of course, of Dominick S. Maldonado, the misery of a
> 20-year-old Tacoma punk who is accused of shooting up the Tacoma Mall
> last Sunday.
>
> Yes, I'm assuming he's guilty. When a man starts shooting people at
> random in a mall full of witnesses, uses his cell phone to announce his
> crime, holes up with hostages and is finally led out in handcuffs by
> police in front of photographers - well, the courts have to presume
> his innocence, but I don't.
>
> That, in fact, is precisely my complaint about Maldonado, above and
> beyond his actual assaults with a deadly weapon. It's not enough that
> he feel his own pain or know his own anger; the world has to feel it
> and know it, too - he said so himself. Maldonado succeeded
> brilliantly in making the national news and causing millions of
> Americans who don't know any better to associate "Tacoma Mall"
> with "mad-dog berserker gunman."
>
> Maldonado thus joined a distinguished line of psychopathic misfits who
> have connected depravity with Tacoma in the national news.
>
> There's Ted Bundy - perhaps America's most notorious serial
> killer - who grew up in Tacoma's North End.
>
> And John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. They honed their
> marksmanship behind their house in the Oakland-Madrona district, then
> took their act on the road and made the big time as the Beltway
> snipers.
>
> Also the Trang Dai killers. They shot 10 people, killing five, in a
> Lincoln District cafe seven years ago. I was hundreds of miles away in
> Montana when I heard about it.
>
> Earl Kenneth Shriner, the sweetheart who sexually mutilated a
> 7-year-old boy in Tacoma in 1989. That infamy set in motion a crackdown
> on sex predators that eventually swept all 50 states.
>
> Joseph Edward Duncan, who was arrested in Idaho with a kidnapped
> 8-year-old girl in July and is charged with bludgeoning her family to
> death. He grew up in - you guessed it - Tacoma.
>
> And David Brame, of course. How many cities in the United States have
> had their police chief murder his wife and commit suicide? The chief of
> police, for heaven's sake. That news flash must have gone all the way
> to Khartoum and Ulan Bator.
>
> Have I left out someone? Probably. But you get the idea: Not just
> crimes, but crimes so notorious that they instantly pre-empt all the
> advertising, gossip and noise that normally clutter the national media.
> Outrages guaranteed to startle a nation.
>
> Think of it as the Abu Ghraib Syndrome. You don't just do shockingly
> criminal things - you do them in front of cameras. You foul your nest
> with the whole world watching.
>
> This is, of course, a terrible injustice to a wonderful city. People
> who know nothing about Tacoma beyond what they see on the nightly news
> might conclude it is some sort of American Fallujah whose citizens are
> constantly ducking bullets and dodging sexual psychopaths (when not
> actually shooting someone themselves).
>
> On the contrary, Tacoma is quite a reasonable place to live. I've
> lived in it or next door to it for 18 years; in all that time, I've
> yet to witness a fistfight, much less a shooting. Most of the town is
> safe and friendly. Tacoma does have some sidewalks you'd be wise not
> to stroll down after dark - as does any other good-sized city in the
> United States.
>
> Yet it is Tacoma's peculiar curse to produce or attract criminals
> with a flair for the dramatic worthy of Francis Ford Coppola.
>
> But not all such criminals, thank heaven. After all, Gary Ridgway, aka
> the Green River Killer, wasn't from Tacoma. Al Capone wasn't from
> Tacoma. Tim McVeigh wasn't from Tacoma. Osama bin Laden had no
> connection to Tacoma.
>
> Right?
>
.
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