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08-10-2008, 05:35 PM
When cops are gunned down, it's different
Posted on Sun, Aug. 10, 2008reprint print email
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BY FRED GRIMM
fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com



A cabbie was killed in Hollywood. He was robbed, shot, left face down to die next to his blue and white Friendly Checker taxi. His assailants escaped on foot.

Hollywood police sent a swarm of patrol cars and police dogs on a serious search for criminals so depraved that they'd kill a man for 40 bucks.

But still . . . he just was a cabbie.

Friday's manhunt in Hollywood bore only a piddling resemblance to the outsized police dragnet in Pembroke Pines after a U.S. Customs officer was slain there on Tuesday.

A SHOW OF FORCE

By the time James Wonder was arrested at a dialysis center 29 hours later, close to 500 officers from police agencies across South Florida were in the hunt, some with assault rifles, some in military fatigues. A black helicopter whirled overhead with riflemen perched on either side.

Police stopped passing motorists. Searched trunks. Mangled traffic.

The scene offered a variation on the F. Scott Fitzgerald observation: ''Let me tell you about the rich. They are different from you and me.'' Let me tell you, when cops are gunned down, they're different than you and me.

Far more officers milled around the two mobile command buses parked along Pembroke Pines Boulevard than anyone imagined might be needed to catch the 65-year-old retiree who confessed to shooting Donald Pettit. But this was as much a show of force as a manhunt. The massive police turnout in Pembroke Pines conveyed the grim warning that if someone shoots a law enforcement officer, he can expect an overwhelming, unified, angry response.

POLICE ASSUMPTIONS

Four other officers had been gunned down in Miami-Dade and Broward counties in the last year, but it takes a heroic leap from known facts to conclude Pettit was shot by someone intent on murdering a policeman.

The Pines incident evolved out of a petty traffic dispute punctuated with obscene gestures. Pettit (contrary to an earlier scenario posited by police) had followed Wonder into the parking lot.

They argued. Wonder shot him. Pines Deputy Chief Mike Segarra told reporters that Pettit's ''actions were probably law enforcement related.'' That seemed a stretch. (Segarra might have been mindful of federal benefits due the victim's family if the slaying was officially listed: ``in the line of duty.'')

It's hard to imagine a Customs Service polygraph examiner, in an unmarked car, wearing a T-shirt, accompanied by his young daughter, had gone after Wonder in pursuit of a law enforcement matter.

TESTOSTERONE-DRIVEN

The sheer number of law enforcement officers created the illusion that this intimidating army was hunting down a cold-blooded cop killer. But the reality was an all-too-familiar scenario on the rude streets of South Florida. A collision of testosterone-cranked fools. A mundane, mindless, insane road rage incident that escalated into homicide.

The fool with a gun did something unforgivable. (Though a murder prosecution could be complicated by the amorphic parameters of Florida's new ''stand your ground'' self-defense law.)

Hundreds of police officers attended Pettit's funeral in Coconut Creek on Friday. A police chopper hovered over the burial procession. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, two killers managed to elude that other manhunt.

Their victim was just a cabbie.

08-11-2008, 12:56 AM
You know I cant comment on the brotherhood of cabbies, but when one of our brothers/ sisters are killed in the line of duty, we take it to heart. We put our lives on the line everyday for little pay, and lots of heartache. So Im sorry, but if one of us gets hurt or killed, we will come out in force and look for the suspects. Maybe the cab drivers should form a union.

08-11-2008, 02:33 AM
Nevermind the fact that many of the officers there to assist were there on thier own time. No pay. Just there because when one us goes down we all go down. Thats just the way it is. Dont like it.....tough. It will never change. We are the police. The men and woman who put on the badge to protect the public. We are it. If we go down then who is left. It is just different for us. Dont worry. The cabbie will get justice. Just because there are not cops from all over the state on the scene he will still be taken care of. They can run but they cant hide forever. :cop: