It’s anything but a video game.
1971. New York City Police Officer Frank Serpico was nearly killed when a dealer shot him in the face during an undercover drug bust at a Williamsburg apartment building. His colleagues in blue left him for dead, as vengeance for trying to fight the corruption of other NYPD officers on the take that allowed many of New York’s most violent criminals–particularly the hardened drug lords and organized crime syndicates that wrought the destruction of tens of thousands of lives in New York City–to continue business as usual for too long.
Several months after recovering from his wounds, he testified before the famous Knapp Commission investigating police corruption. ”The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist in which honest police officers can act without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers,” Serpico stated before the commission. He was the first cop in the country to openly expose the widespread and systematic corruption in a police force as well as its detrimental consequences on the people whom the department served. He left the job in 1972 shortly after his historical testimony.
1996. Irish crime beat reporter Veronica Guerin had been exposing drug kingpins preying on Dubliners for a couple of years, often with violent reprisals from the would-be subjects of her articles. She had gunshots fired into her living room. She was shot in the leg after a struggle with a gunman who showed up to her front door. One drug lord even threatened to rape her son and kill her if she wrote even a word about him. Yet, after surviving all these attacks, one summer evening in June on a road outside of Dublin, two motorcycle assassins pumped 6 bullets into Guerin’s car, killing her.
There are infinite examples that I can use, but these two remarkable, irreplaceable individuals alone demonstrate what it means to have the call of duty and the common good that can be borne out of the hardship along the way.
With the voluntary end of Serpico’s career as a police officer, so came the involuntary end of the careers and freedom of many corrupt officers: “On the basis of the [Knapp] commission’s work, several dozen indictments were issued and there were some convictions, although not many, given the scope of the report. If some wrongdoers managed to evade punishment because of lack of evidence, they saw their careers compromised or downgraded because of the inquiry.” The prosecution of corrupt cops continued well into the next couple of decades, and a whole string of successful anti-corruption reforms were implemented as a result.
In the wake of the public outrage that followed the brutal death of Guerin, which Irish Prime Minister John Bruton called “an attack on democracy,” hundreds of arrest warrants were executed, and multiple major drug lords were charged, tried, convicted and imprisoned. The Criminal Assets Bureau, designed to confiscate any money earned through illegal operations, was created in the wake of Guerin’s murder as a further tool in the fight against major drug operations.
But you have to wonder, did these courageous and honorable people really have to suffer as they did in order to pursue a common good that only stood to benefit all of the other decent, honest and hardworking people around them? Maybe if others tried a little harder before them to do the same, the tragedy of their experiences would have been much less severe. However, that question can never be answered with any certainty for them.
However, it is a question we can ask ourselves as we look forward in our lives, in our community, in our country, and in our world.
For that call of duty does not have to be reserved for the truly exceptional individuals who seem to walk out of sheer legend for the dangers and obstacles they faced to fight for what was right and proper. Each and every one of us has that call of duty as free American citizens, and that same call of duty exists for human beings everywhere on this earth.
We as individuals in aggregate have remarkable control over the good and bad things that people do when we choose to act on it. The problem is the limited number of instances in which most of us realize it, and the even fewer occasions when we do take the chance to act.
Brooklyn has been experiencing a high number of shootings lately, most famously in Brighton Beach over a week ago when a gangbanger decided to shoot off rounds towards a rival. Instead of hitting the target, though, the shooter killed a 16-year-old bystander and wounded three other people.
Do you think it is possible that no one knew the shooter had a gun, almost certainly an illegal gun? No one sold it or gave it to the shooter? The shooter had only the best intentions of pure self-defense in case of emergency? I think not. Violent crime would drop dramatically in this city, especially in already vulnerable communities, if only those who knew exactly what is going on did the right thing.
Let’s take community and political activity. Who hasn’t heard, said, thought or experienced that politics is too dirty for honest people? After all, congressmen who are guilty of mere non-criminal sexual peccadilloes are forced out of office when the real, indicted criminal politicians–ones who almost certainly took bribes and fleeced the taxpayers–continue to serve in public office simply because they haven’t actually been convicted and imprisoned yet?
So now your question is what do you think I should do about it? You’re thinking, “Is he asking me to go out there and rip an illegal gun out of some lowlife thug’s hand and perform a citizen’s arrest?” ”Am I supposed to break into my Assemblyman’s house and plant a bug, listening intently for whispers of unethical conduct?”
Of course not. But do you really think only the Frank Serpicos and Veronica Guerins of the world have the duty of doing that for you? We’re Americans. We pride ourselves on our rights, our freedoms and the pursuit of happiness custom made to order. We don’t often pride ourselves, however, on the comparably few responsibilities that we owe this society in exchange. Many others before us have fought and won the battles that render everything this beautiful country has to offer at our disposal. All we have to do is keep it that way, making improvements along the way as needed.
But how do you imagine that will happen if as individuals we are too often squeamish for the unpleasant tasks that allow us to keep this gift our ancestors have given us?
If we shy away from politics because dirty people who might smear and attack us have monopolized it, how will it ever get cleaner?
If we stay quiet when we know a friend got himself a gun because he needs protection when he’s peddling destructive drugs to the weaker souls of our neighborhood, how will it ever get safer?
If we buy that dime bag of marijuana without thinking of how wide and deep the blood trail runs from, let’s say, Mexico to get it here, how can we ever expect others to give thought to the unintended consequences of their actions? How can anything get better then?
OK, so you say even if we do something, nothing seems to change in any measurable way, so what’s the point in making my life harder if things will be better for me not to be involved, not to care?
That is exactly why so many people ignore the call of duty that each of us are presented with on a regular basis, whether you notice it or not. If a problem doesn’t directly affect us, the natural human instinct is to avoid it like the plague, maybe even pretend to ignore its existence. Yet, every unresolved problem, whether it’s crime, drug abuse, political corruption, or some other offense, eventually affects all of us.
So you didn’t intervene by calling the cops about that drug deal you just saw where one of them had a gun. God forbid you got tagged as a rat, right? But maybe, five months later, that drug dealer gets into a fight on your block with a rival dealer, deciding to shoot off a few rounds to prove what a proud and tough young man he is. Then it’s your sister who’s fatally shot under the armpit, by accident, of course, just like poor Tysha Jones. What then? Let’s say it was your friend who saw the deal, and he said nothing, but it was still your sister who was killed. Wouldn’t you be insanely furious that your friend didn’t do anything? Of course, it’s not your friend’s fault, really. He couldn’t have foreseen that your little sister would have gotten hurt. She was a good girl. She didn’t get mixed up in that stuff. But if only your friend said something, did something, maybe it would have all been very different. Maybe if that shooting could have been prevented, maybe your neighbor wouldn’t have to fear allowing her son to play with the other kids on the street, radically altering his entire childhood as a result. And so forth, and so on.
It’s a hypothetical, but it’s based on the reality of what has happened hundreds if not thousands of times in places like New York City over the years. Someone always knows, yet they too often fail to act before tragedy strikes, and even if the tragedy doesn’t directly affect everyone, its consequences can change everything for everyone anywhere near it.
On another hypothetical, you are a young American. You love your country, but you feel it can do better. You and your friends want to do something about that. You start to, but then the older group of establishment cronies look at you as a threat. They’re so disturbed by your initiative that they try to mess with your job, smear your reputation, and do whatever else they can to persuade you to quit. You then give up, deciding that the obstacles and the efficacy of your cause just don’t make sense. Your friends see that and they too throw in the towel. Yet, an even bigger threat appears on the horizon, and now everyone is looking at each other to see who will have the courage to take it on when lesser challenges inspired more than enough trepidation to quit. Maybe this time, it really is too big for you or your friends to do anything about, and only if 10 years ago you hadn’t given up so early, so easily. Maybe if you only thought a little longer term about it, everything would be different.
How much harder and more destructive might the battle for the right and proper thing be when more and more people leave the toughest tasks to the select few? How much better would this world be at home and abroad if people thought carefully about the little things along the way that they could do to change the course of events, whether for just another individual or an entire nation?
So the point is this: when you’re presented with the call of duty, however little or huge, think carefully before choosing not to respond. Next time you see something wrong, say something, even if it’s just a pothole on the street. At the very least, it’ll save a neighbor from having to go to a mechanic this week. Next time your friend asks you to lend a hand with a community or political effort to right some wrong, do a little something. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy, but at least a little something. Who knows? You might feel better about yourself for having done it, even if it cost you some time or money. And in 20 years, you very well may have changed the world because of it.
Just like Frank Serpico.
Just like Veronica Guerin.
Just like those countless known and unknown heroes, seemingly of legend, who have come before them and who most certainly will follow.
The question is, will you be counted among them?