Shots Fired--Officers Down : Why more and more chiefs of police weep at the funerals of their colleagues

Hours after the funeral of two Palos Verdes police officers, Capt. Michael Wayne Tracy and Sgt. Vernon Thomas Vanderpool, who were shot dead by a gunman who burst into a meeting room, a rookie LAPD officer, Christy Hamilton, was fatally shot in the chest as she got out of her cruiser Tuesday in the San Fernando Valley. Last weekend, a Culver City police officer was shot in the neck and barely escaped death. And two unarmed security guards, Dagoberto Carrero and Rupert Morales, were shot and killed in Orange County.

We look for reasons for these tragedies that have come so numbingly, in so few days. There’s a seeming jump in the rapacity of criminals, which can render every call that the police make a life-threatening one. And police are not only outgunned but outmanned--fighting too much crime on too many fronts. That they succeed as they do is a tribute to their hard work and courage.

But certainly a major factor, as any police officer will tell you, is the pervasiveness of guns. The slain officers and guards weren’t stabbed or beaten or poisoned. They were shot, just as all nine Southern California officers killed in the line of duty in the past year were shot, too often with weapons more powerful than police have--weapons that just should not be in public hands, because from law-abiding and careful hands they slip into criminal hands. It is the awful risk guns pose to officers that has prompted chiefs of police across the nation to endorse varying degrees of additional gun control. They see the carnage clearly, and weep at the funerals of their colleagues.

There are plenty of gun-control measures under consideration in Sacramento, but none of them is going anywhere. These include a comprehensive handgun ban, for which retiring Assembly member Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood) has found but four colleagues brave enough to co-sign, and several lesser measures, including one by Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), whose bill calls for licensing of handgun owners.

The police simply cannot be society’s shield against bullets. Every time an officer is killed, it reinforces the us-against-them, thin-blue-line mentality that divides police from the people they protect. This can breed the very abuses that police reformers then attack.

Building more prisons and increasing prison sentences might help in the long term. But public protection would be better served, more quickly, by prevention, including putting more police on the street. President Clinton talked about Hamilton’s death Wednesday in calling for action on his crime bill, which funds more police. That’s fine, but it is the wise public view, reflected in every poll, that America needs more rather than less gun control. Legislators must hear this message and stand up to the gun-lobby backlash.