Retool the crime-fighting toolbox

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Time to restock the anti-crime toolbox.

A Baltimore Police homicide detective was doing his job Wednesday night when he was shot in the head. He died Thursday afternoon.

A week earlier, a veteran, off-duty D.C. police sergeant was shot while sitting in his vehicle. He, too, died.

Coincidence? Perhaps.

Trend? Don’t wait to find out.

Traditionally, thoughts are rendered to violent crime survivors.

Traditionally, prayers go up immediately for the loved ones left behind after deadly carnage.

All well and very, very good.

Also, the political gavel is pounded for gun control.

Isn’t it time to consider a nonhabitual effort? One, perhaps initiated by men and women of the cloth, that delves into — not the who and how and why — but the other end of violent crime? The prevention end?

It’s the job of legitimate media to ask the pertinent questions, the long-established who, what, when, where and how.

Who was the shooter or shooters? Where and how did the victims die? What were the victims’ names?

That’s what we do, and we’re damn good at doing our jobs.

Still, that information does not tell the complete story, and that’s where people such as Detective Sean Suiter come in.

Detective Suiter, who was 43 and had been on the Baltimore force for 18 years, was simply doing his job, canvassing a Baltimore neighborhood on Wednesday about 4 p.m., when he approached a “suspicious” person and was shot in the head. He was taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, and that is where he died.

Do those facts make his death more comforting? Not to his family. Not to his colleagues. And certainly not to law enforcers who hit the streets, prowl the internet and execute policing policies to protect us every day from the people who want to replace God as giver of life and determiner of death.

At community meetings, are people really discussing crime prevention?

Do worshippers in houses of faith even discuss what should be done to curb mankind’s violent streaks — the streaks such as the mass shootings, the serial assaults and attacks on other human beings?

We endlessly complain that government isn’t doing enough. Perhaps what we should be asking is a simple question: What can I do about the carnage?

And you want to know why.

The hands of Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh are tied to the oath she took, the laws of Baltimore and the state of Maryland.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is similarly tethered, as are other mayors, governors and members of Congress and state legislatures.

They can only do so much.

So, it’s time to breach the gap and act out.

If we want to stop the carnage, we need to stop making excuses for it: Oh, he was mentally ill. Oh, she was on drugs. Oh, they both need anger management.

That may indeed be the case. Yet, in far too many instances, that’s just an excuse.

Sometimes people commit violent crimes because that’s what they know, that’s what they were reared on. They imagine no other options because they are unaware of other options.

That must change.

Prayers and makeshift memorials help people to grieve — after the fact.

Get out of the bunker mentality, the way of thinking it’s you against the world.

That is, of course — and this might sound sappy — but unless you do not view yourself as part of the whole.

If that’s the case, the toolbox definitely needs restocking.

• Deborah Simmons can be contacted at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.