On Wednesday, October 31, 2007, Officer Chuck Cassidy was executed on the streets of Philadelphia. He had unknowingly walked into a Dunkin’ Doughnuts that fateful morning, interrupting a robbery in progress. The gunman shot the officer at point blank range in the face and then proceeded to run away. To add insult to injury, he doubled back and took the dying police officer’s weapon. The theft of the policeman’s gun was caught on video. It clearly shows a heavy set gunman with a slight limp running away from the scene of the crime. At the time that this article was written, the killer was still at large – armed and considered very dangerous.

At the time that this article was being written, I couldn’t imagine being in the gunman’s shoes after the crime had been committed, nor could I see walking in them beforehand. Life could not have been easy for this man. Anyone that could take a life so easily could not have had it easy, which is not to defend the actions of the gunman. I’m not doing that at all.

But I’ve been following this story in the media, and my heart goes out to the unacknowledged victims of this crime. My heart goes out to Officer Cassidy’s wife and children. I know that somewhere in this city, this woman’s heart has been shattered and her life forever changed because the man that she loved is never coming home again. There will be no more Happy Christmases or Fathers Day for his children – at least not as they knew it. My heart goes out to the gunman’s grandmother who was so stricken with fear and dread that she couldn’t even form the words to convey to her grandson to turn himself in. But her tears of anguish said it all.

As I think about this incident, I can’t help but wonder how we as a society got here. When did our children lose respect for the law to the point that the very people that took a sworn oath to protect and serve become the targets of hate and aggression? Did it start in the Forties, Fifties or Sixties? Did it start before that? And while we’re thinking on lines like this, how about our children? How did we get to the point where our children don’t seem to care about life, whether it be their own or anyone else’s?

I often think about the times in my youth where my biggest fear was getting beaten up and having my lunch money stolen. The very idea of someone coming to school and killing half of my classmates never occurred to me. I was fortunate enough to come up in an era of penny candy, kool-aid and playing outside until it got dark. We didn’t have personal computers or the internet nor did we have WII, XBOX or Playstation III. Back then, you relied more on outdoor activities to pass the time. Pre-adolescent games of Mother-May-I, Take One Giant Step, Hide-N-Go Seek and Freeze Tag gave way to Touch Football and Basketball. My personal favorite was getting on my ten speed bike and biking until it was almost dark.

Outside of gang warfare, street violence wasn’t the headline maker. Violent crimes were sensationalized because they weren’t the norm. Society hadn’t become complacent as yet. We hadn’t gotten to the point of accepting violent, anti-social behavior as commonplace as opposed to the exception.

But now we have. Senseless murders happen all the time. It’s almost to the point where we’ve gotten comfortable with the fact that our society has changed, and is still changing into something that’s scary and this brings me back to Officer Cassidy.

This man had taken the oath to serve and he was gunned down by someone who valued his life far less than their own. I say this because it could have easily have gone the other way. Officer Cassidy could have reacted quicker, and if that had been the case I would be writing an article about the senseless death of yet another young, black man.

What concerns me about this whole scenario is the grim future that is painted by this random act of violence. It may be safe to assume that many acts of violence are perpetrated by young men under the age of 30. And if that is the case, where will society be ten or twenty years from now? What will happen to the children of these men; children that will grow up without a positive father figure? But the biggest and most important question I have is this: When will this seemingly unending cycle of violence come to an end?

On Wednesday, November 7th, Officer Cassidy was laid to rest. The perpetrator was apprehended in Miami, Florida and is currently not fighting extradition back to Philadelphia. Sadly enough, the funeral of Officer Cassidy not only represents his untimely demise. It also represents the death of an American Dream…for his family as well as the family of the alleged killer.