A Word of Caution

It is depressing to have to report this but there's a point to be made, so listen up, people.

This comes from our ordinarily placid and laid back neighbors to the north. It's even more troubling when you read that this was the first officer who died in the line of duty since 1983-they don't make killing cops a regular practice in Ottawa. It gets worse-the offender in this case was a soon to be former officer himself.

Tuesday last at about 4:30 a.m. local time, P.C. Eric Czapnik, a Polish emigre and father of four who had joined the Ottawa, Canada police department a few years ago was sitting in his squad car outside the emergency room of the Ottawa Hospital Civic Campus was stabbed to death. Although he couldn't have been in a better place to be injured, all the efforts of emergency personnel were in vain and Constable Czapnik died at about 5:30 am local time.

P.C. Czapnik joined the force at the age of 48 after emigrating from Poland in 1990, where his father had been a police officer for 30 years or more, and he still had family in Warsaw.

What's more than ordinarily troubling about all this is that the person wielding the knife was an on the skids R.C.M.P. officer from Saskatchewan who'd been furloughed from the Mounties after threatening a Mormon bishop with a knife. Kevin Gregson been told to resign or be fired, but nobody'd pulled the pin on him so he was at least nominally still a member of the R.C.M.P.

The point to be made is one I've made a number of times and one you've probably heard more times than you can count, but it is this. There is nothing normal about this world or anyone in it, particularly when you wear the uniform.

Be safe.

Photo courtesy CBC.