There is a movie coming out next month that greatly intrigues me because of its efforts to dramatize the effort by the LAPD to deal with a particularly nasty gangster by creating an extralegal gangster squad. In watching the attempts of the movie trailer to glamorize the vigilante style of justice, including the subplot of the lead character’s interest in a beautiful but dishonorable young woman, one can see a great deal of the problems that have plagued the LAPD (and many other police departments) during the last century or so. And understanding these problems can help us to avoid the threat of lawlessness ourselves.

I have read stories concerning the Clackamas Town Center shooter that it was someone who was a licensed concealed carrier of a handgun whose recognized efforts to counter the shooter led him to kill himself before the mall became a war zone with hundreds of police officers. A shooter who may have fancied himself to be the only killer in town seems to have been unnerved at being a target himself of one of the mall passerby that he thought helpless and defenseless. The result seems to have been total despair and self-destruction, even though the concealed carrier (who did so legally and legitimately) did not even fire a shot because he did not have a clear one [1]. His refusal to endanger the lives of innocents in order to pursue vigilante justice was noble, and his open presence as a concealed carrier approved by law was enough, apparently, to unnerve a disturbed but very evil man. There are a lot of lessons we can take from this.

One of the lessons we can learn is that there are legitimate means of providing yourself and others with additional safety. For those who have such a feeling of duty and responsibility it would not be a problem at all to become a licensed concealed carrier. I have worked with such people and I find no danger in it myself. People who are licensed receive a great deal of scrutiny in their behavior in order to ensure that they are law-abiding and decent citizens. Though I have never fired a gun (or used another weapon) in anger, I understand that guns are a valuable too of self-defense that can be horribly misused (as any other tool can be) by the wicked. It is how we use tools that demonstrates our character or the lack thereof. And now we get back to the problem of the movie that we began with.

LAPD’s gangster squad allowed the people in it to go outside of the law to fight against evil by using extralegal means such as gangland executions and other vigilante behavior. Even though these behaviors may have been successful in their original task of fighting against a particular gangster mostly forgotten in history, the behaviors toward the law of the LAPD (and other police departments that engaged in similar practices) have endured, threatening the legitimacy of those who do not honor and respect the law being considered as the enforcers of the legal order on others. The legal protections that the accused have that force cases to be proved with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt are designed not only to protect the accused themselves, but also to protect ourselves as people of honor who value equity and justice even when it comes to the wicked. For by the same standard we judge others we will be judged ourselves. May we hope that standard is a just one and not a corrupt one, and may we hope it comes from those who care about justice and the innocent rather than a cavalier disrespect for the legal order they claim to protect.

[1] http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/12/robert-farago/clackamas-concealed-carry-showdown-the-full-story/