Thinking Outside the Cooler on Crime: Put down that Igloo!

Sergeant Erik Duran

There’s been some dissension recently about the three-to-nine-year prison sentence handed down by a New York judge to former police sergeant, Erik Duran, for throwing a plastic beverage cooler at a fleeing suspect in the Bronx. The cooler hit the perp in the arm, causing him to lose control of his motorcycle, crash and die. The harsh sentence was uncharacteristic for Supreme Court Justice Guy Mitchell, who a few years earlier gave only nine months to a guy who beat a homeless man to death.

But what the complainers don’t realize is that there is an epidemic of violent, cisgendered white male cops killing entirely innocent model citizens, out for a day’s drive on their moped, by attacking them with flung coolers — fast becoming the lethal weapon of choice for these diabolical killers. Finally, one judge said: “ENOUGH!”

That was the tone of The New York Times’ article on the officer’s sentence. In the Times’ telling, the case wasn’t about causation, intent or reasonableness, but a test of “how the legal system would respond when officers harmed or killed people.” To the Times’ satisfaction, this was “the first conviction of a New York Police Department officer for killing a civilian in a decade.”

Sergeant Duran has to be sent to the hoosegow to fill some imaginary quota in the Times’ head for how many cops should be sent to prison. If not actual justice, it was cosmic justice.

Times readers would be shocked to learn this, but cops kill civilians only about a thousand times a year. That’s out of 50 million interactions with the public, or 0.00002 percent of the time.

Between 2016 and 2020, the Times put more than 60 cop-bashing headlines on its front page, according to the must-read book, “Special Victim Status” by Gregory Mantell. For each anti-police story, there were four murdered officers in the same time period, whose deaths the Times ignored or buried.

Here are just a few of the anti-cop headlines from the Newspaper of Record:

“Excessive Force Is Rife in Chicago”

“Fort Worth Police Have More Violence to Answer For, Residents Say”

“Departments and Multiple Infractions for One New Jersey Police Officer”

“A Small Ohio Town Clamors to Curb Aggressive Policing”

“Georgia Killing Puts Spotlight on a Police Force’s Troubled History”

“Thousands of Complaints Do Little to Change Police Ways”

“‘Testilying’ by Police: A Stubborn Problem”

“Distrust of the Minneapolis Police, and Also the Effort to Defund Them”

“Another Nightmare Video and the Police on the Defensive in Tucson”

There’s also this amazing statistic: “One single civilian incident, the Breonna Taylor shooting, received more coverage from [the Times] than ALL 312 police officers of all races murdered in the past 5.3 years combined.”

The Times isn’t overly concerned with the fact that the cooler-throwing sergeant was defending himself and other officers from being run over by a 30-year-old drug-dealer coming directly at them on a gas-powered motorcycle. If they’d died or been injured, no big deal. Definitely not front-page material.

Apparently, the mistake the police made was trying to arrest repeat offender Eric Duprey after observing him sell a vial of cocaine to an undercover officer. When Duprey attempted to escape on his motorbike, the police should have simply leapt out of his way. As Justice Mitchell said, “He could have been captured another day.”

The judge’s logic, quoted by the Times with apparent approval, was that he, personally, “was not convinced that Mr. Duran’s life — or those of his fellow officers — was in danger.” (Certainly not as much danger as being a homeless guy in the vicinity of a murder defendant sentenced by Justice Mitchell.)

Most significantly, the judge said that sending Sergeant Duran to prison would be “a general deterrent.” I guess now police officers will think twice before trying to stop fleeing felons by throwing picnic items at them!

This gave me an idea for how we might disincentivize psychopaths who commit violent, completely unprovoked attacks on innocent people, slash pedestrians with machetes, rape women on subway platforms, push commuters onto train tracks and other piquant behaviors that have become commonplace in New York.

Prison sentences might work as “general deterrent” on them, too.

Last month, a transgender illegal alien pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old boy in the bathroom of a Harlem bodega — and was promptly released by Judge Michele Rodney. (Named “Jurist of the Year,” by the Caribbean American Lawyers Association!)

Wouldn’t punishing the rapist, instead of letting him go, operate as a general deterrent to other men thinking of raping 14-year-old boys?

Eighteen-year-old gang member, Steven Mendez, got probation for participating in a violent 2020 armed robbery and shooting — his second arrest for assault with a firearm. Not long thereafter, the extremely undeterred Mendez murdered a complete stranger, 19-year-old college student Saikou Koma, by shooting him in the head.

Had Mendez gotten something a little rougher than probation for his earlier violent crimes, we would have had both specific deterrence — Mendez would have been in prison, not on the street shooting a college student in the head — but also general deterrence, for any other psychos considering shooting passersby for absolutely no reason.

Speaking of deterrence, shouldn’t Sergeant Duran be commended for dissuading bikers like Duprey from ignoring the helmet law?

I think I’ll run my breakthrough idea up the flagpole with the new mayor, citing Justice Mitchell as my inspiration.

But until this “deterrence” thing catches on, at least New Yorkers can be secure in the knowledge that if they’re ever fleeing law enforcement, no police officer will throw Tupperware. And if they kill a cop, their Times-reading relatives will never know about it.