Its been a rough week here in Charlotte. Two members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department were gunned down. The suspect is a thug with numerous arrests for assault on a police officer. I’m not surprised.

Jeff Shelton and Sean Clark were the cops. I never met either one of them but I knew them well. I know it seems like a strange comment, but as an ex-cop I feel that I know everyone on the job, in fact I know that we are all brothers in blue.

I could eulogize Jeff and Sean but there are already numerous tributes and memorials from friends and family and officers who worked with them. There tributes are much more personal and fitting. I can only offer the perspective of one who used to wear a badge and carry a gun, one who is a member of this wonderful community we call Charlotte.

Jeff and Sean were ambushed, gunned down by a 25 year old man with no job and many arrests. No wife but two children. Someone who had laughed at the criminal justice system in the past and rightfully so. Here in North Carolina it is not a felony to assault a police officer. Amazing but true. Most of us in the civilized world are unaware of this fact since we’re not in the business of assaulting our police heroes. But the criminal element, the thug population, is well aware of this fact and it has bred a contempt for the law and its enforcers that is palpable. When I was on the job we would joke about how the criminals were back on the street before we completed their paperwork now that statement is completely true and not at all funny.

Over the years I’ve been to many police funerals, way too many actually. Sometimes I was in uniform, sometimes in civilian clothes, but always amongst my brothers and sisters in law enforcement. It’s always the same actually. There’s some of the usual cop banter, even some joking and then there’s a bang on a drum, a mournful wail on the bagpipes, the low and slow voice of the honor guard captain calling cadence and then it becomes real again. We’ve come to honor, and bury, a police officer.

What every cop knows in his heart when he’s at a police funeral is this. It could have been me. In fact, it was me. The thug didn’t shoot and kill Jeff and Sean because they were Jeff and Sean, he shot and killed the most visible symbols we have of a decent civilized society. That is what is so troubling about this. We mourn for the individual officers but we had better realize soon that it was all of us that was attacked.

Maybe its time we did something to stand with our brave cops on the beat. Maybe its time we made assaulting a cop a felony. Maybe its time we actually punished the worst of the worst. Maybe its time we stood and were counted as we stood with our frontline warriors.

Please remember Jeff Shelton and Sean Clark in your prayers. Please visit www.wbt.com for details on how you can contribute to help the families they have left behind. Please join with me and do something.

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