Pubdate: Thu, 22 Feb 2007
Source: Blade, The (Toledo, OH)
Copyright: 2007 The Blade
Contact:  http://www.toledoblade.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/48

OFFICER DOWN

DEATHS of police officers in the line of duty have not occurred often 
in Toledo, but the senseless killing early Wednesday of a veteran 
vice detective, allegedly by a 15-year-old boy with an extensive 
criminal record, leads us to believe that too little is being done to 
deter juvenile criminals.

Toledoans have a right to question what a 15-year-old was doing on 
the street at 2 in the morning with a gun - particularly a youth who 
has a string of arrests that include carrying a concealed weapon and 
several drug offenses.

Now a police officer is dead because juvenile authorities let a 
dangerous individual slip under their radar. That's an outrage, both 
to the community and to the slain officer. He should have been in an 
institution for delinquents.

Detective Keith Dressel, 35, a 13-year veteran, was on routine patrol 
undercover when he was shot in a near North Side neighborhood. As 
Police Chief Michael Navarre put it, the work of officers assigned to 
vice and narcotics investigations is, "a very, very dangerous job." 
And it was not surprising that Detective Dressel was not wearing a 
protective vest because such attire, Chief Navarre observed, can 
"blow their cover."

The risk of injury and death is one police officers, especially those 
in undercover work, take for granted, although such acceptance does 
not make the loss any easier for Detective Dressel's wife and two 
young children.

Amazingly, given the danger involved, it has been more than 36 years 
since the last Toledo officer died on duty, and that was a case that 
had a profound effect on the city for a long time.

Early in the morning of Sept. 18, 1970, Patrolman William Miscannon, 
33, was shot in the head as he sat in a paddy wagon on Junction 
Avenue at Dorr Street. The incident, which came at the height of 
racial tumult experienced by Toledo and many other urban centers, 
touched off a gun battle at the nearby Black Panther headquarters.

The 25-year-old black man charged with killing Officer Miscannon, who 
was white, eventually went free after two trials ended in hung juries 
marked by conflicting testimony. Ironically, the outcome put a 
sizable dent in the Black Panthers' contention that the 
white-dominated legal system was stacked inevitably against them.

In Wednesday's shooting, there is no racial issue, as both the 
alleged shooter and the slain officer were white. But weapons in the 
hands of children and the scourge of plentiful drugs on the street 
are among today's most pressing urban problems, perhaps surpassed 
only by lack of parental supervision for many youths, rich and poor alike.

In that perilous confluence stand police officers like Keith Dressel, 
who risk their lives daily to protect the public. The best that can 
be done now is to accord him a funeral consistent with the high 
respect the community has for its safety personnel.

Detective Dressel, the 31st Toledo officer to die in the line of duty 
since 1880, might be alive today if the courts had done their job.
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