My Facebook friend Beth Baca recently asked her followers what she should do if she had a bad guy at bay in her home. Most commentators recommended that she should perforate the perp. Wrong answer. That’s cold-blooded murder. Also wrong: holding a bad guy at gunpoint. Other than a free-range bad guy, nothing could be more foolhardy than attempting to hold a dangerous criminal at gunpoint. Just let him go. Then let the cops go find him. Equally, it’s a bad idea to go bad guy hunting. Here’s a tragic story from our neighbors to the north that illustrates the folly of being your own law enforcer/cop/detective . . .
Jeremy Cook [above], a native of Brampton, Ont., was gunned down at about 5:15 a.m. ET on Sunday. London police found his body at the rear of a strip mall near Huron Street and Highbury Avenue in the city’s north end. He had multiple gunshot wounds.
Cook had left his smartphone in a taxi and traced it electronically to an address on Highbury Avenue.
When he and a relative went to the address, he was confronted by three men in a car, Steeves told CBC News.
What happened next is still being pieced together, but police say that when Cook tried to retrieve his phone, the vehicle began to drive away, prompting him to grab on to the driver’s side door. Shots were fired and Cook died from multiple wounds.
The blame for the killing rests squarely on the shoulders of the man who pulled the trigger, and those who enabled the assassination. That said, I appears that Mr. Cook somehow figured that the person who had his phone would surrender it peacefully. That assumption was optimistic and fatally flawed. He should have left the recovery of his property to the police.
As repeated here frequently, avoid stupid people in stupid places (e.g., a car park at the crack of dawn) doing stupid things. When it comes to personal safety, criminals are the dictionary definition of “stupid people.” They are to be avoided at all costs. Seeking them out, or holding them at bay, raises the risk of reducing your body to ambient temperature.
There are plenty of people who consider it their civic duty to apprehend bad guys when the police can’t or won’t do their job. I do not begrudge them their moral code and personal bravery. But safety says leave law enforcement to people paid to perform that task. Unless, of course, you have no option.