Ambush

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 24, Verse 8

"To plan evil is as wrong as doing it."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

I can't prove it.  But, of course, I don't need to.

I know in my heart that it was a calculated, planned ambush.  An attack.  An assassination.  It was meant to send a message, as loud and as clear as the gunshots that rang out that night, searing across the bone cold December air.  As clear as the voices crackling through PPD radio.

"Sam 105 - policeman shot."

"601, notify them he's been shot in the face."

Of course, the first shot was to his back.  Just like in the 1970s.  Just like Piagentini and Jones.  Just like Foster and Laurie.  If you want a successful cop-killing: first you shoot them in the back.  

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a very intelligent man-- any of his supporters as well as his detractors will tell you that.  He learned many lessons well, and, as a Black Panther, he assuredly learned some lessons well from his Black Liberation Army predecessors about armed violence, about "offing pigs" as they called it.  

They don't teach much about this time period in most American history classes.  I guess there just isn't time.  Thanks, standardized testing.  

I don't buy, and I don't think you should either, that it was a mere coincidence that, at 3:51 in the morning on December 9th, 1981, Officer Daniel Faulkner stopped a Volkswagen Beetle driven by William Cook and that Cook's brother, Mumia Abu-Jamal just happened to be sitting across the street in a parking lot with a .38 Charter Arms revolver loaded with high velocity +P ammunition at the same exact time.  And I don't expect you to believe, and I certainly don't, that is was just a coincidence that Cook began to resist arrest and punched Faulkner in the face, initiating a confrontation that would lead to Jamal running across the street, shooting Faulkner in the back, Faulkner getting off one shot to Mumia's chest, and then Mumia finishing off Faulkner with a grisly shot to the face.  

I don't believe it was a coincidence.  And I don't expect you to either.

Then again, after all these years, I don't know what I expect of you, or of me.  I don't know what I expect of anybody.  I guess I should have expected a cadre of Mumia supporters standing outside City Hall today marking the anniversary of the slaying, but I almost didn't.  As I drove past City Hall, though, there they were, a rag-tag bunch, assembled, encouraging motorists through a bull-horn to "HONK FOR MUMIA".  And people did.  I rolled down my window and yelled something out to them that wasn't very nice.

Sometimes I'm not very nice.

They said they're "gonna free him brick by brick."  And I actually laughed at the wheel of my car.  No, you're not, I thought.  You're going to go home when your voices get hoarse and order pizza.  And that's fine, because the fact of the matter is nobody is freeing anybody, and William Cook drove his Volkswagen around the block the wrong way down Locust Street with his lights off several times before Faulkner initiated the traffic stop, and that to me says AMBUSH.  It says, come on, you fucking pig.  Let's dance in the mud together tonight.  Let's dance.  

They used to dance like that in the '70s.  They'd place phony 10-13 (Assist Patrolman) calls from pay phones to see which police officers responded to and from where.  They studied response times.  They timed traffic lights.  They staked out precinct houses.  They bombed a police funeral.  They machine-gunned officers inside their patrol cars.  They watched.  And they waited.  And they danced.  

Dance they did and, when the music stopped in Philly thirty-two years ago, a young police officer lay dead on the cold, hard pavement and three decades of insanity ensued.

So take down the bricks.  Go order pizza.  Dance the night away.  But don't forget one important thing, one very, very important thing: Daniel Faulkner was never going home that night at the end of his shift.  Because they had planned to do some evil.  And I can't prove it, but of course, I don't have to.