Lockdown Nation

Imagine your whole neighborhood is unreachable for the night.  Your children are in their early teens – certainly able to be left alone while you run some errands, but not to spend the night by themselves.  The area is on lockdown because someone believed to be a homicidal psycho is thought to be in or near the area.  Would you like to be home to protect your family, or would you rather be forbidden from going to your home, and re-directed to the community firehouse to spend the night?  This is but one of the cascading effects of a weeks-long investigation in Pennsylvania.

Eric Matthew Frein is accused of waiting in ambush and murdering one Pennsylvania State Trooper and grievously wounding another.  He apparently laid in wait for Trooper Dickson, shooting and killing him, then attempting to do the same with Trooper Douglass, who survived.  Frein fled to the hills and has been in hiding ever since.

These are heinous crimes to be sure, and Frein is being sought with a vengeance. He was placed on the FBI’s ten most wanted list and a small army of federal state and local forces have been amassed to find him, spending almost $1,500,000 per week.  Frein would have been better off murdering a regular citizen – we commoners/civilians don’t usually rate anywhere near that level of spending. There are few instances of multi-jurisdictional teams expending millions a week to hunt the killer of a proletarian.

But because one bad actor shot cops, then anything done to catch him is apparently acceptable.  And while the police always place a much higher premium on apprehending cop killers, this lockdown mindset is hardly limited to such cases, and seems to be growing throughout the land.  For example:

Arm cut mistaken for gunshot wound prompts school lockdowns

California college campus put on lockdown after man’s umbrella gets mistaken for rifle

Man dressed as a [Star Wars] Stormtrooper prompts lockdown

‘Fresh Prince Of Bel Air’ Theme Song Voicemail Leads To Lockdown Of Pennsylvania County Schools

The story that opened this column did not occur hours or even days after the shooting.  It happened weeks later.  Police are still, on thin evidence, locking down people’s lives.  Various citizens are left with no choice but to sleep in their cars, denied the right to return home for the night after choir practice, or seeing their wedding plans ruined.

It certainly seems that Frein had a preoccupation with committing violence against police, but there is no evidence to suggest he would target schools (all of which are already highly security-conscious these days).  All the more reason to continue searching without violating the fundamental rights of everyone in a 20 mile box around the crime scene.

We all remember the Boston Marathon shooting, but not so much the fact that many civil liberties were breached in the manhunt that followed, and that it was ultimately a failed attempt to find Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  He was found – two hours after the “shelter in place” order was lifted – by a person in his own backyard.

This unwillingness to consider the consequences of curfews and lockdowns combined with a refusal to apprise actual risk has turned us into a bunch of scaredy-cats who are willing to shut down our lives for some perceived security benefit, with no consideration to the costs.  We’re averaging 12 deaths per year from school shootings.  How much have you read/watched/worried about them?  There are, on average, two kids a day, every day, in the U.S. who drown to death.  How much ink/air/money/worry has been spent on that much greater threat?

After Sandy Hook and the Boston Bombings, the impulse for more security is understandable, but we need to think rationally and devote resources to greater threats rather than perceived threats.  We also have to be ever vigilant in safeguarding our liberty.  What is more basic than the liberty to return home from work to one’s family?

In “Crisis and Leviathan”, Robert Higgs lays out how government, during crises, “take over previously private rights and activities. When the crises passed, a residue of new governmental powers remained (emphasis mine). Even more significantly, each great crisis and the subsequent governmental measures have gone hand in hand with reinforcing shifts in public beliefs and attitudes toward the government’s proper role in American life.”

We need to recognize this threat to liberty, and the cost of letting it continue, both in absolute terms of restricting freedom, and the damage it does to all of us.  This is especially true for children who proceed through childhood believing there is a real possibility they will be gunned down any moment during the school day, when in reality they face more than double the risk of getting killed by a lightning strike.

Five weeks into this hunt, can we finally let the people have their freedom back?  For how long will the search to strip Frein of his liberty mean the people of northeast Pennsylvania lose theirs?  Ben Franklin said that  “[t]hose who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  Some wise commenter added, “and will lose both.”