Some People Are Just Evil

When I was 20 or 21 years old, I was sitting in one of my Criminal Justice classes at the small university in Eastern Washington State which I attended. We were in the midst of a discussion of criminal intent and why people commit crime when after several politically correct answers from the pre-law folks, my no-nonsense professor exclaimed "Some people are just $%#&*+@ evil!" At the time it seemed to be a fairly obvious declaration. But as the years have passed I have begun to think that perhaps it was more profound than I first realized.

I had seen this phenomena before, but in late November and early December of 2009 when the headlines were filled with stories of the heinous, calculated murder of 4 Lakewood, WA Police Officers by Maurice Clemmons, a violent career felon, I noticed something. None of the mainstream media, including my beloved Fox News, were characterizing Clemmons as an evil man. They were all interviewing psychologists who professed to be able to describe and diagnose his mental ailments. They all spoke of how this could have possibly been avoided if Clemmons had received proper treatment and maybe the pharmaceutical of the week. Not one mention of the philosophy of my former Criminal Justice Professor that postulated that "Some people are just #$%&*!@ evil!"

During my tenure as a Reserve Police Officer and especially as an Armed Security Officer at the Seattle Field Division of the FBI, I had many occasions to come into contact with those who were violent because they were evil and those who were violent because they were mentally ill. There is a world of difference and I believe that due to the cold, precalulated manner in which Clemmons assassinated Mark Renninger, Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold and Greg Richards, that Clemmons is indeed an evil man and knew exactly what he was doing.

The truely evil act in a cold and calculated manner. They plan their attack and carefully choose their victim. The mentally ill on the other hand are irrational, impulsive and unpredictable. You may have dealt with this person 100 times before and never had a problem with them other that hoping that they would stop talking about the satellites that were tracking them so that you could go get a cup of coffee, then the next moment they grab your partner and try to drag him into the street. After one notable melee in the lobby of the FBI office, I actually ended up having to draw my firearm, reholster and then deploy pepperfoam. After the altercation when the suspect had been subdued, he told us that if we would have only taken the microchips out of his skull, none of this would have been necessary.

It is my belief that society is beginning to characterize all violent criminals as mentally ill for political reasons. If the person is mentally ill, the act wasn't really his fault. The logic would follow that just as you can't blame a person for having cancer, you can't blame a person for having paranoid schizophrenia with aural and visual hallucinations. It's all part of the new mentality that people are not responsible for their own actions.

That lecture still sticks with me, some people are just evil.

This is why I choose to carry a firearm for the protection of myself and my family. This is why I train and practice with my firearm of choice. This is why I follow the Cooper Color Codes of Situational Awareness when I am in public.

You may have heard the phrase "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away." This may sound like rhetoric, but it is true as is demonstrated in this audio clip of an incident in which a woman was forced to shoot a stalker who had broken into her home. At one point, you hear the woman desperately pleading for assistance from the police. The dispatcher tells the woman "Ma'am, it's only been two minutes, they're on their way." I shudder to think of what would have happened to that woman if she had not taken the initiative to be responsible for her own self defense.


In 2005 the US Supreme Court Ruled that the police have no Constitutional duty to protect individual citizens. The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.

For hours on the night of June 22, 1999, Jessica Gonzales tried to get the Castle Rock police to find and arrest her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, who was under a court order to stay 100 yards away from the house. He had taken the children, ages 7, 9 and 10, as they played outside, and he later called his wife to tell her that he had the girls at an amusement park in Denver.

Ms. Gonzales conveyed the information to the police, but they failed to act before Mr. Gonzales arrived at the police station hours later, firing a gun, with the bodies of the girls in the back of his truck. The police killed him at the scene.

The theory of the lawsuit Ms. Gonzales filed in federal district court in Denver was that Colorado law had given her an enforceable right to protection by instructing the police, on the court order, that "you shall arrest" or issue a warrant for the arrest of a violator. She argued that the order gave her a "property interest" within the meaning of the 14th Amendment's due process guarantee, which prohibits the deprivation of property without due process.

The district court and a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit dismissed the suit, but the full appeals court reinstated it and the town appealed. The Supreme Court's precedents made the appellate ruling a challenging one for Ms. Gonzales and her lawyers to sustain.

This case proves the rhetorical statement that "when seconds count, the police are minutes away."