The Words Of A Hero

Lieutenant Brian Murphy was the first officer on the scene at the mass shooting at the Sikh temple last August.

Murphy was shot several times as he tried to help the first two victims he came across.

He has written his thoughts on his experience of that horrible day.  It is well worth the read, but be warned it does have a graphic quality to it.

To me, the key part was not the actual events but what came afterwords as he reflected on his feelings and the way others treated him:

I get card after card after card saying, "You're my hero." So I think about that word.

There was a guy in my neighborhood growing up, George. He joined the FBI. That's what I wanted to do when I was a kid — work for the FBI. So back then, I thought, He's my hero. Because he did something that I wanted to do. Then Tom Seaver became my hero. He pitched the Mets to the World Series in '69. That was awesome. Those were my heroes as a kid, because as a kid you don't have a great concept of what being a hero really is. And it's gotten watered down a lot since. Now you can become a hero on YouTube. I look at all the cards and think, If I'd only caught one round, would I still be a hero to those people? Maybe not. Am I a hero because there are so many bullets in me that if you shook me up and down I'd rattle like a piggy bank?

That's not a hero. That's luck. There's a difference.

The people who were inside the temple that day have the right to see it differently. The ones who ran into the pantry when he was coming after them. They can say, and only they can say, "You saved me by being there. You're my hero." They can say it because he was gonna kill them, and when he saw me, he left them alone.

I was just doing my job.

Oh, Those Union Thugs...

The story:

Don Machacek, a Minnesota DOT worker and member of AFSCME Local 2792 (Council 5), rescued a mom and her two kids from their sinking car on Tuesday.

As part of Mn/DOT’s Freeway Incident Response Safety Team, Machacek has spent the last four years helping motorists and assisting law enforcement on area highways.

His reaction to suggestions he’s a hero? “Nah. I was just doing my job.”

Obviously, just another overpaid union thug.

Honey, I'm Home

If this doesn't pull at your heart, then you don't have one:



My favorite, the dog.

Vote For Vidal!

Yesterday I told you about Milwaukee Police Officer Vidal Colon, who showed his heroism by dealing with an armed thug even though he had been shot three times.

I have just found out that America's Most Wanted is now taking votes.

Please vote for one of our own hometown heroes and vote for Vidal!

Thank You And Good Luck, Vidal!

As many of my regular readers know, I used to work at the House of Correction. After going through the probationary period, I applied and was accepted into the Special Management Team (SMT), which was a dorm that held inmates that suffered from a serious mental illness.

One of the many admirable people that I had the pleasure and honor to serve with was SMT Correctional Officer Vidal Colon. Unfortunately, I only served with him for a very short time, as he was soon to become a member of the Milwaukee Police Department.

Last year, Milwaukee Police Officer Vidal Colon, showed the world that he is truly one of Milwaukee's finest:

The officer responded to a domestic disturbance complaint Saturday night. The suspect ran. The officer chased. According to the police chief, the confrontation ended in moments in a blast of gunfire.

Fresh from a spring vacation, Milwaukee's police chief took time out Monday morning to survey the scene of Saturday's shootout.

"It's really quite startling to look at it first hand and see what an extraordinarily brave act our officer committed and the extraordinarily intimate surroundings in which this occurred," Milwaukee police Chief Ed Flynn said.

Flynn said Officer Vidal Colon was chasing the suspect through a gangway when the 45-year-old man opened fire."The officer was wounded and went down. (He) continued to exchange fire with a suspect who went down, and both were on the ground shooting at each other before this gun battle ended. Mercifully, without the loss of our officer's life," Flynn said.

The officer shot the suspect five times. The suspect hit Colon twice in the legs and once in the stomach. The officer wasn't wearing a bullet-proof vest. They're not required to.

"I spoke to him yesterday (Sunday)and he had already gotten the stern lecture from his lovely wife, Tina, that he's never leaving the house again for the rest of his career without his body armor on. He did not have it on," Flynn said.

Colon is home recovering. His wife told WISN 12 News reporter Colleen Henry he has no comment.

The reason I'm bringing it up now, a year after the fact, is that I just learned tonight that Vidal is one of the eight finalists for America's Most Wanted 2010 All-Stars.

According to the AMW website, voting for the grand winner is supposed to start today, but apparently they haven't set up the program yet. I will update this when I find out how to vote.

But I would still like to thank Vidal Colon for his service and sacrifice for the betterment of the community, and wish him the best of luck in the contest.

Daddy's Little Girl

'Nuff said

Mayor Tom Barrett: Hometown Hero

Saturday night, Mayor Tom Barrett got the chance to enjoy some quality private time with his family and take in State Fair. Unfortunately, the happiness didn't last long.

On their way back to their car, the group came across a scene of domestic violence, in which a young tough was threatening his ex-girlfriend's mother, who was trying to protect her grandchild from this drunken fool.

During the ensuing altercation, Mayor Barrett suffered numerous injuries, including a severe laceration and some broken teeth. He also shattered his hand punching the assailant.

The good news is that the Mayor is now out of the hospital and recovering at home. During the entire time in the hospital, Barrett has been able to keep up on the city's business and has maintained a positive attitude, even joking with Governor Doyle about bumping his announcement of the main headlines.

Appropriately, Governor Doyle came to Milwaukee to visit Barrett in the hospital, and President Obama called Barrett to wish him well and call him a hero.

Unfortunately, while Mayor Barrett has exemplified all that is good about Milwaukee and Wisconsin, there are others that have chosen not to take the high road. There have been the expected number of gun nuts that have tried to spin this into an argument for concealed carry laws, totally ignoring the fact that there were several innocents in the area, including the woman Barrett saved as well as Barrett's own family.

With all of those people around, the least wise course of action would have been to start a fire fight.

Even more unfortunate, is that the gun nuts were not the most offensive people out there. One horrible person, Amy Geiger-Hemmer, of the blog site The Right View Wisconsin, takes the prize for the most ignorant, hateful commentary. Ms. Geiger-Hemmer wrote a malicious post the day after the incident, when the news was still fresh, which included this:

The second thought that came to mind, knowing that Barrett is a staunch liberal, was why didn't the mayor just offer to go sit down for a chat with the offender? (At least he had the courage to whip out his cell phone and dial 911! Never mind that he chose not to intervene physically to defend the woman that was being attacked...) After all, according to the liberal mindset, criminals are usually considered victims, too. They have feelings and needs! Why didn't Barrett reach out and offer to console the attacker? Find out what was bothering him? After all, maybe the woman who was being beaten had said or done something that angered him. She may have been to blame! Many times in liberal land, we know that there is more concern shown for criminals than their victims. Which is why so many of us are against activist judges in our court systems. Activist judges, as we have seen, will bend over backwards in favor of criminals, disregarding their evil deeds and forgetting about the true victims.

Hello? AGH? Anyone home? The Mayor got hurt fighting the guy. What in the world do you mean that "he chose not to intervene physically to defend the woman?" Barrett shattered his frickin' hand punching the guy!

Just in case there were still a few people that doubted her total lack of tact or insight, she then put up another post today, wherein she has the audacity to play the victim. The post also has this gem in it:

We see too often the violent perpetrators, once caught, are treated with kid gloves and don't serve the prison time they deserve. Anthony Peters - who attacked Barrett and another woman - should have been sitting in prison. He was well-known to the West Allis police, and had a lengthy criminal record. His background included: several assaults, disorderly conduct, and an assortment of other crimes. And just recently, our soon-to-be-ex Governor Doyle has legislated "early release" for many in prison. Where is the real concern for the safety of the general public? Who are the real victims - the criminals, or the people they prey on? Sometimes, after observing our court systems, it is hard to tell.

My highly esteemed friend, Zach Wisniewski, points out one of the follies of her verbal flailing:

...I couldn’t find one single criminal conviction involving Peters, and while Anthony Peters may not have been a stranger to the police in West Allis, the last time I checked, an individual couldn’t go to prison without first being convicted of a crime – that’s what separates our nation from two-bit dictatorships. What’s more, even if Peters had been convicted of one of the crimes for which he has pending criminal charges, he certainly wouldn’t be sent to prison. After all, while Amy Geiger-Hemmer might think it would be a grand idea to employ a “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” system for anyone convicted of any violent, in the real world folks convicted of misdemeanors don’t get sent to prison.

But that is not all. I have heard reports that this Peters fellow was bipolar (manic-depressive). Whether this is true or not, I cannot say with any surety, but the behaviors described by this guy is far outside of the norm, and it would not be a stretch to believe that Peters suffered from some type of mental illness. Add to this the fact that Peters was self-medicating with alcohol and who knows what else, and there is a recipe for disaster.

If Ms. Geiger-Hemmer needs someone to lambaste, perhaps she should be attacking the person who removed much of the mental health support system in the area. But then again, it would be uncharacteristic for the right to hold any of their own to any accountability.

For more on AGH's immature and emotionally-stunted screed, I would refer the gentle reader to The Chief and/or Illusory Tenant.

As for me, I just want to wish Mayor Barrett and rapid and complete recovery, and to thank him for his heroism and showing of true leadership.

Note: The t-shirt pictured at the top of this post is for sale at Brew City Brand Apparel. Even though my birthday was last week, it would not be tacky to get me a belated present, like one of these shirts.