David Dorn, 77, was a retired St. Louis police captain. The other night, as
violence raged in St. Louis, Dorn was alerted to an alarm at a friend’s
pawnshop.
He did what law enforcement officers are expected to do. Dorn answered
the call. He tried to stop a gang of looters. The details are
incomplete, but we do know he was shot to death.
And there is video.
He’s stretched out on the sidewalk. The looters rolled in and out,
taking what they could grab. Someone recorded a video as he lay there.
It was broadcast on Facebook.
The video is 13 minutes long. It is a horrible thing to see. A younger
man speaks encouraging words to the older man as he lay dying.
“Oh cuz, come on, OG … Come on, OG. Oh my God, cuz,” says the younger
man. “For a TV? They killed this old man for some TVs? … c’mon, man,
that’s somebody’s granddaddy.”
It’s a scene as terrible as the one caught on video showing George Floyd killed by Minneapolis police.
Dorn’s eyelids flutter. He has a phone in his hand. The looters keep
rolling in and out of the pawnshop, holding their treasures. And then he
was gone. News reports said police had no suspects.
Does anyone take a knee for him?
Dave Patrick Underwood, a federal security officer, was killed as
protests raged when he was standing guard outside the federal courthouse
in Oakland, California. An officer with him was also shot but survived.
And the FBI said the officers were targeted because they wore uniforms.
Underwood is African American. But nobody takes a knee for him, either. Like Dorn, most Americans don’t know his name.
Many cops believe their badges have been shamed by what happened to
Floyd in Minneapolis. Others just want to get through their shifts and
get home safe, without getting shot, as is happening all too often
lately, and some cops have been lucky, barely escaping with their lives.
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