This morning (7/31), Prosay heard the news that P.O. GERARD CARTER died during the early morning hours. As anyone who has experienced a person shot in the head knows, recovery is almost an impossibility. So his death was not all that unexpected.
What was very troubling was the way it happened. CARTER was just sitting in a van, waiting for the next move for his unit. No foot chase, no shots fired back and forth. An execution. For all we know, CARTER's gun was still in his holster.
On the day after Carter was shot and the perp captured, the politicians were quick to point out that the perp was "on Parole." The pols have made that statement as bad as "he's got AIDS..." But to bad-mouth Parole would require those who try to also bad-mouth a group of officers that have allowed the parole status to be as successful as it really is. Contrary to popular belief, the supervision provided by the NYS Parole Officers has kept "ex-con" recidivism very low.
Parole Officers are a mixed group of "cops" and "social workers" who have to know the difference between a guy who got caught doing a bad thing, and scumbags who have no business roaming the streets with the rest of us. Bad people do bad things, whether they are "on parole" or free to roam without supervision; it's this supervision that makes parole the necessity that it is. If the politicians were to actually look at the numbers, they would find that Parole, as an agency, does the job very well.
But the politicians won't hear of that! "Parole is bad because WE SAY Parole is bad!", they chant over the coffins of the dead. They need this to keep their faces prominent.
Years from now (and, unfortunately, not too many years from now) those politicians will look back at the death of P.O. GERARD CARTER, father of a six-year-old little boy, and remember, not his tragic death, but how they came out against "that evil parole system," and help pass a state law that did little to change the system---because the system really works. But it will allow the politicians to continue to collect another paycheck past the next election.
MIKE MCALARY, in his Daily News column on July 31, put this "Pol versus Cop-as-Pawn" in the best words in talking about the Carter shooting:
"The guy (the perp) was on parole, which is all the city administration cares about. There is a lack of grace because it seems every dead cop must fit neatly into an issue page."
