The Rembis Report And Other Fascinating Topics - Volume CXVI

It is always nice to win.

To celebrate and be celebrated. To be the winner and handed a trophy for a top prize is a thrill. I have won competitions and trophies, and handed them out myself, so I know exactly what that feels like. It is awesome.

Having a trophy on your shelf to show everyone who walks by is the icing on the cake of accomplishment. It does not diminish with time. The trophy is proof that you outperformed your peers in some way, that you rose to the challenge, and won.

But sometimes a trophy is not a statuette or a medal. A trophy can be intangible, in which case, winners may not always get all the credit they deserve. A competition may not be officially sanctioned by a league or federation. A personal best can be, in this way, indistinguishable from a monitored event. You might have won, or felt like a winner, because you know you did a great job, but you won’t get a plaque, or your name in the paper, and might not even be remembered as the person who did what you did. But you know your story.

Such is the case with law enforcement. Sometimes it is a thankless job. It can be dangerous. Peace officers run the risk of being harmed by dangerous criminals when defending the general public from them. Sometimes they get killed in the line of duty. Police business is not a joke.

All law enforcement, regardless of agency, go to work every day to protect and serve the general public. Some have easier beats than others, and some have it tougher, all depending on what they end up dealing with on any given day. None of them can predict when and where they will be needed. Every day they come home safe is a win.

There are no daily score cards for cops. They do what they do and once a year, they might attend a luncheon or dinner banquet to pay tribute to some outstanding peer. Some may get a plaque, or a medal, for exemplary service, bravery under fire, what have you, and that is great. But there are no trophies.

However, once a while an opportunity presents itself for cops to garner some attention. A chance to shine. Fifteen minutes of newspaper fame or a flash of recognition on TV. They might pull somebody out of a lake, a cat from a drain, or a jar off the head of a wayward raccoon. They grin for the camera and take it in stride. Sometimes they hunt down a fugitive for a couple weeks and when they finally get him, like they did with Danelo Cavalcante this week, they get the whole team together for a group photo.

Ever since the invention of the camera, victory photos have simply become a natural part of human culture. We take photos at every sporting event, big or small, awards shows, dog and cat and livestock shows, you name it. When somebody wins something, they get their picture taken.

But Mike, police know that what they do is not a game. Hunting down an escaped killer with a rifle is serious stuff. Why would they pose for a picture with this guy?

Human nature. It is as simple as that. There were shouts of “foul” across the digital landscape in the wake of this event. Many seasoned law enforcement called it unprofessional. Grandstanding. Spiking the football. They had just as many supporters as detractors. A job well done! Hats off to those fine, hard working, officers!

I don’t have a problem with it. It is a record. It is history. It is proof. It did not look degrading in any way for the fugitive. His face was covered with blood when they put the cuffs on, but before everyone lined up before the camera, they cleaned him up. Cavalcante looked as dignified and respected as a captured criminal could. He was the only one not smiling, but might have come out of this situation a lot worse. Better to walk out in chains than carried away in a body bag.

Police don’t usually get line of duty photo ops like this. When they do it is important to get a clear shot of the villain because that is who it is really about. The general public isn’t looking at the photo of the cops the way the cop’s Moms are. News gawkers want to take a close look at the bad guy.

When Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was taken into custody after his jailbreak, the Mexican Marine who held him from behind twisted his neck to look directly at a TV news camera. They paused for a moment so that we could all get a good look. That Marine’s name is not in any news story I found because he is not the story. El Chapo is.

Police rarely outshine the criminals they capture. One exception is Elliot Ness, of Untouchable infamy. He wasn’t just a character on TV and in the movies, he was real, who is best known for arresting Al Capone.

Lots of the crime that took place in 1930’s America has been serialized and has become, like it or not, part of our heritage. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow have been romanticized ever since they were gunned down together on a lovely spring day in Louisiana.

During their crime spree, Bonnie and Clyde, like many other outlaws, posed for photos, wielding weaponry and smiling, sometimes taking the photos with their own cameras. Stories of their bank robberies were in the newspapers and on the radio, so by all accounts, they were famous. They were criminal celebrities.

But they had to be stopped. They killed 13 people and might have killed more.

Even though they were not captured alive, law enforcement still stood beside their bodies in the morgue for pictures which made it into the newspapers. There were probably the same ratio of people then as there are now, on both sides of the fence, who argued over whether or not that was acceptable behavior. But it happened.

Bonnie and Clyde were not the only criminal celebrities on the scene back then. Charismatic bank robber John Dillinger posed for pictures and even signed autographs. He and his gang of crooks robbed banks and police stations, and killed 10 people. Dillinger was charged with one murder but not convicted.

Two months after Bonnie and Clyde’s demise, the FBI gunned him down in front of a movie theater after watching Manhattan Melodrama starring Clark Gable and Myrna Loy.

People approached his dead body on the sidewalk and dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood. Over 15,000 people came to see his body in the morgue. I haven’t found any selfies of anyone standing there duck-facing behind the glass, but I’ll bet there is at least one out there.

Celebrity is a strange thing. Ask any famous person you meet about how they feel about being famous. Most can’t really describe it. It is just one of those things. It is what it is, I have heard some say, and they leave it at that.

Some trophy hunters are infamous. In the below example, the trophy is smiling. But who can’t help but smile when trapped by cute little beagles?

This is another one of those photos where the cops involved might have been better off not posing for the picture, so they wouldn’t have to hear about what they did that was so wrong, in bad taste, yatta yatta, whatever. But what is done is done. Doesn’t look like anyone is too upset and nobody knows who these guys are anyway. Let them have their moment.

People have been hunting forever.

I am not a hunter. It is not my thing. I like meat, don’t get me wrong, but they have plenty of it at the grocery store, so I am not going to go out shoot my own cow. Besides, finding a nicely marbled black angus pot roast for a good price is a whole lot easier than shooting a cow and bringing it home. Plus, I hear that isn’t allowed anyway.

Yet, lots of people like to go out and kill stuff, be it for subsistence or whatever thrill they get in massacring an animal that does not need to be killed for food, like a lion, or a rhinoceros. Trophy hunting is stupid, and I don’t get it, but the argument is that it supports taxidermists and local hunting guides for wherever prey live.

Real hunters take their own shots, but that does not always happen. Some outfitters will take the shot for their clients, so they can stand there for a photo with a dead giraffe, or an elk, or a bear, or an ibex, or a pronghorn, or a sheep, or some other animal that really did not need to be killed for any other reason than to satisfy the person who paid to kill it, whether they actually killed it or not.

Poaching (hunting out of season or for protected species) is illegal, but most hunting is not. Neither is posing for a picture with a dead animal. While not illegal, trophy hunting and posing with dead animals may be considered poor form.

But there is nothing to be done about that.

However, some things need to be hunted to eradication. For all their beauty, Burmese pythons do not belong in Florida, and if they are not destroyed, they will devastate native wildlife. So it is always open season on pythons. One specimen had 111 eggs in her belly.

In Florida, it is always open season on lionfish, too. Come on down, haul in some lionfish, and take all the pictures you want. Try to look as cool as Hugh Hefner does in this photo of him hauling in a dolphinfish (mahi-mahi).

Take your photos any way you like. Go for it. Be serious or get silly. They are your pictures. But please make sure that if you do anything in poor taste, to keep it to yourself.

Nobody needs to see you making out with anything dead, and you shouldn’t be doing that anyway.

Did you really have to tell everyone that, Mike?

A little good advice never hurts.

Thanks for reading.

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