Two things are clear today. One, there are three dangerous killers on the loose. Two, catching them is up to you.
Hundreds of police officers, deputies, troopers, ATF agents, FBI agents, Secret Service agents and volunteers were desperately combing the woods and roads and stores and villages around Fox Lake, Illinois, where a police officer was senselessly gunned down Tuesday morning. But they came up empty.
There were dogs, helicopters, heat sensors, all-terrain vehicles and military vehicles, and when some of those officers collapsed from searching in full gear in the sweltering heat, there were more officers rushing in from all over the state to replace them.
And nothing. Which is why, as so often happens in a manhunt, they need your help.
The details of the crime are gruesome: While on patrol Tuesday morning, Lt. Joe Gliniewicz radioed in that he was chasing three men. But then he went silent, and when his backup appeared, they found him dead of a gunshot wound. (It’s been reported that his weapon was gone, but it’s appearing now that it was found near him, although not on his person.)
If the killers didn’t use the officer’s own weapon on him and then drop it nearby — and we should know about that soon — then they are still armed and dangerous. All those who were searching for them knew that they could find themselves face to face with fugitives who could take their lives too. And yet they put their own safety aside for the simple sake of justice and protecting residents’ lives.
As we learned all too well from the most recent massive manhunt, for two escaped convicts in upstate New York this summer, even a couple of unarmed prison escapees on foot can get lucky and penetrate a police perimeter; these three men, possibly armed and with a good head start, clearly did the same. If they managed to steal a vehicle, or had access to one on their own, they could be anywhere.
The cops do have some useful areas to pursue. If there was any physical confrontation with the officer, they may be able to obtain trace DNA from the suspects. Since they ran from the officer, and it was a hot day, they were probably perspiring, and their sweat could have been transferred to his uniform, or — if they did indeed take his firearm — onto the weapon itself.
The area to the north of where the officer was killed is very commercial, so it’s likely there are surveillance cameras from those businesses to review. Some of that surveillance footage has already been found.
But if we learned anything from more than 20 years of chasing fugitives at “America’s Most Wanted,” it’s this: The greatest tool law enforcement has in any manhunt like this isn’t the hardware or the law enforcement manpower. It’s the public.
In almost all of thousands of cases, we found there was someone who knew where the fugitives were. No one commits a crime like this and calmly returns to his daily life. They make mistakes. They talk. They enter a store and act suspiciously, and the guy behind the counter notices, and either he calls the cops and says there are some weird guys in my store, or he doesn’t make that call.
And on that simple decision hangs the success, or failure, of any manhunt.
These are difficult times in the relationship between the police and the public. The many highly publicized shootings of unarmed citizens, many of them African-American, has angered many. And if that anger turns to action that changes the nature of how law enforcement responds to situations, then it will make us all safer, police and the public alike.
Those who blame the recent shootings of police on the “Black Lives Matter” movement are missing the point. The sad and painful point is that this terrible moment is one we have lived through again and again.
The number of police officers killed every year topped 100 back in 1911, and save for one year in the middle of World War II, has not dipped below that number since.
Policing is a dangerous job, and the vast majority of the men and women who serve do so bravely, valiantly and with honor. There are crazed dirtbags who think nothing of shooting a cop, and sadly, there always have been and always will be.
And so those who wish to cast blame in this moment need to put their anger aside. And those who feel anger at police must put that anger aside, too.
Because we, the public, have a job to do.
The officer who died is just a guy named Joe, who was married and had four kids and volunteered with the Explorers and was thinking about retiring. A guy who isn’t part of the national debate on police procedure or racial profiling, one who was just doing his job, which was trying to keep everybody safe.
And for that, he deserves justice, and his family deserves justice. So this can be a moment where the argument becomes inflamed; or it can be a moment where we as a nation come together.
And it’s essential to the manhunt that we do. Because it’s all but certain that someone, by now, has heard something. Or seen something. And so there is one message, in this moment, that needs to be heard, loud and clear:
These killers need to be caught.
And it’s all up to you.