Once Again, Tragedy Reminds Us of How Things Ought to Be

And a child shall lead us.

No, I’m not reading anything biblical into the kidnapping and killing last week of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion. I’ll leave that to others who understand better the workings of such things.

But I am a man holy enough to seek something, anything, uplifting from such a spiritually demoralizing event as the murder of a child. It doesn’t have to be written or spoken but imagining a child in the extended custody of an abductor is not an exercise that will make you feel good about humanity.

So is there anything to take from the horribleness-- besides the relatively quick capture of her alleged killer?

For her family and friends, maybe not. No one would be surprised if they never got over it.

But in the perhaps overly optimistic search for something to feel good about, maybe there’s this: Samantha unified the public and police in a way we seldom see. At least in this case, and more so than I remember seeing in any case in memory, the public and police rose almost as one to find her killer.

“I have worked a number of these cases, and I haven’t seen the kind of public response nationally that I have seen in this case,” an FBI agent said last week before Alejandro Avila was arrested Friday. “The public is out there, and they are watching.”

Wouldn’t it be something if that were the norm? If somehow the citizenry and the law-enforcement community trusted each other enough to band together to fight crime?

Wishful thinking, perhaps, in a society where some citizens sometimes see police as a potentially dangerous enemy, and cops often are wary of everyone but themselves.

Last week, it all came together when a little girl was snatched while at play. “I think everyone fell in love with Samantha,” Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jim Amormino said Friday night after a long week. “It brought people together. Hopefully, everything will stay together.”

Amormino said Sheriff Mike Carona is a big believer in public-police cooperation. Lots of top cops say that, but it only works in places where the public trusts the police. We need look no further these days than Inglewood to see that that isn’t a given. While police there are under siege for the rough handling July 6 of a teenaged arrestee, Carona was thanking the public and press Friday for helping in the arrest of Avila.

“We had thousands and millions of eyes and ears out there,” Amormino said.

That’s the way it should work in a civilized society. Understaffed law- enforcement agencies should be able to rely on the public at large for help. Police often don’t tap into that enough. Part of the reason is that cops don’t always distinguish themselves in dealing with citizens--even on such relatively mundane things as traffic stops or handling citizen complaints.

For a few days last week, at least, the hunt for Samantha’s killer showed us how it could be. If Avila turns out to be the killer--and Carona literally addressed his pointed remarks to him by name at a news conference Friday--it will be because someone turned him in. All the police work in the world may not have nabbed him, otherwise.

However, the law- enforcement agencies also did their part by putting out a lot of information, even giving some behavioral clues to look for in a potential suspect.

Maybe it was Samantha’s photo in the papers and on TV that unified the good folks against the unseen bad one. “I think that was part of it, yes,” Amormino said. “Her picture, her darling smile, that precious little girl.”

When I talked with him by phone Friday night, Amormino had just gotten off duty. I asked where he was, and he said he was just pulling out of the Runnion’s driveway in Stanton. “I wanted to stop on my own time,” he said of the place that he and Carona had visited often during the week in their official capacities.

Outside the Runnion home, people of all ages had left a memorial of teddy bears, cards, flowers, candles and notes. “It’s definitely not just her picture,” Amormino said. “It hits hard when it’s a kid. Everyone can relate to that.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821; by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626; or by e-mail at dana.parsons@ latimes.com.