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A few months ago there was a rather unusual incident of damage related to a car chase that rocked the entire Valley of the Sun here in Central Arizona. Two choppers from local news stations crashed into each other while providing coverage of a police chase and came down in a shower of burning rubble in a nearby park, killing four newsmen, two from each station involved, but thankfully not harming anyone in the park. It was a miracle the tragedy wasn't far worse but it was a tragedy nonetheless. While all the stations grounded their choppers for a time everyone looked for someone to blame. Thus this same debate came up. In this particular case the newsmen were careless and could have prevented the accident if certain safety protocols which have since been put into action were used. I should point out that there were five news choppers in he area all scrambling for the best camera angles. One chopper got under another and as it was rising up its rotor caught on the chopper above it. That is what caused the crash. These kinds of practices have endangered lives for a long while and it unfortunately took a tragedy such as this one to wake people up to the dangers. More while working as a security officer at Arizona State University I observed several news choppers covering the fire at the student union which has since been closed. I was watching them closely in light of the event I just described and was quite relieved to see that no two ever went anywhere near each other. The hard lesson had been learned. However the idea of blaming the police is just a little ridiculous. Sometimes police do get a little reckless and they can cause damage unnecessarily. In those cases they should be held responsible but sometimes we have to ask ourselves why the vehicle was being chased. If this was a murder suspect who in their attempt to escape capture made it seem very likely they were guilty and might even kill again, would you want them to just let the guy go? What if he had kidnapped a baby and was using it as a hostage, or a young girl? Would you want to wait and see if he let his captive return home safely, or wait for the body to be found in a river, or worse? Generally speaking and with some obvious exceptions the police are there to serve and protect. They should not be granted a free pass for abuse of authority, but they also should not have to consider public reaction to what they do before deciding the best and safest way to take down a dangerous criminal. We need to let them do their jobs and not be constantly at their throats. Let heroes be heroes.

Learn more about this author, Ronald Gibson.
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