Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 17, 2006 23:44:05 GMT -5
'Bucky' deserves no sympathy from us
"He can run but he can't hide." That was heavyweight champion Joe Louis
talking about challenger Billy Conn before their heavyweight title fight
in 1941.
"He could run but he couldn't hide." That was New York State Police
Superintendent Wayne Bennett talking about Ralph "Bucky" Phillips, who had
done a pretty good job of running and hiding for 5 months before
surrendering to police on Sept. 8 in, uh, Pennsylvania.
Despite the fact that he's believed to have shot and wounded a New York
State trooper 8 days after breaking out of an Erie County jail on April
10, Bucky became something of a folk hero, at least among inhabitants of
southwestern New York, after leading police on a not-so-merry chase back
and forth across the Southern Tier, leaving behind a string of burglarized
camps and stolen cars.
Diners offered "Bucky Burgers," and opportunistic entrepreneurs began
peddling "Run Bucky Run"-emblazoned T-shirts. That nonsense ended on Aug.
31 when he, again allegedly, shot two troopers, one fatally, who had been
on surveillance outside the residence of Kasey Crowe, a former girlfriend.
At that point, Bucky reverted to what he had been for most of his life, a
misanthropic punk.
It was also at that point that the pursuit of Bucky became a national news
story.
The prom queens who read the news on the cable channels began chattering
about him, and before long the wire services and even The New York Times
discovered the story.
It had been a story for nearly five months, but The Times operates on the
Hanes underwear principle: It isn't a news story until the Times decides
it's a news story. And once The Times got on the story, it was only a
matter of time before one of its social scientists would come up with the
heart-wrenching story of young Bucky, squatting in the rubble-strewn yard
outside the family shanty staring at a hay bale and pretending it was a
television set.
Of such stuff are career criminals made. At least according to The Times'
recipe.
Something else happened about that time, too: a two-week hole in the hunt
for Bucky Phillips.
In a time sequence compiled by The Associated Press that ran in this
newspaper on Sept. 9, there is a 10-day gap between the shooting of
Trooper Sean Brown and a car theft, allegedly by our Bucky, in Hanthingy.
During that time the search for Bucky was concentrated in northern Broome
County and southern Chenango, with the state police coordinating the
efforts from a command post in Colesville near Harpursville.
Motorists were stopped and cars searched round the clock.
Police helicopters prowled overhead day and night, spotlighting rural
dwellings.
Families went to bed at night behind locked doors and with loaded firearms
close at hand.
But you'd never know it from later accounts.
The Colesville CP was shut down after the Hanthingy car theft, and attention
shifted back to Chautauqua and Cattaraugus, Bucky's old stomping grounds.
Now Bucky, who vowed not to be taken alive, has been and will spend the
rest of his days in prison, unless he decides to break out.
He would be and should be looking at a lethal injection, if Pataki and his
legal eagles had known how to draft a death penalty law that didn't read
as if it had been put together by Alberto Gonzales.
(source: Dave Rossie / Commentary; The Ithaca Journal.com)
"He can run but he can't hide." That was heavyweight champion Joe Louis
talking about challenger Billy Conn before their heavyweight title fight
in 1941.
"He could run but he couldn't hide." That was New York State Police
Superintendent Wayne Bennett talking about Ralph "Bucky" Phillips, who had
done a pretty good job of running and hiding for 5 months before
surrendering to police on Sept. 8 in, uh, Pennsylvania.
Despite the fact that he's believed to have shot and wounded a New York
State trooper 8 days after breaking out of an Erie County jail on April
10, Bucky became something of a folk hero, at least among inhabitants of
southwestern New York, after leading police on a not-so-merry chase back
and forth across the Southern Tier, leaving behind a string of burglarized
camps and stolen cars.
Diners offered "Bucky Burgers," and opportunistic entrepreneurs began
peddling "Run Bucky Run"-emblazoned T-shirts. That nonsense ended on Aug.
31 when he, again allegedly, shot two troopers, one fatally, who had been
on surveillance outside the residence of Kasey Crowe, a former girlfriend.
At that point, Bucky reverted to what he had been for most of his life, a
misanthropic punk.
It was also at that point that the pursuit of Bucky became a national news
story.
The prom queens who read the news on the cable channels began chattering
about him, and before long the wire services and even The New York Times
discovered the story.
It had been a story for nearly five months, but The Times operates on the
Hanes underwear principle: It isn't a news story until the Times decides
it's a news story. And once The Times got on the story, it was only a
matter of time before one of its social scientists would come up with the
heart-wrenching story of young Bucky, squatting in the rubble-strewn yard
outside the family shanty staring at a hay bale and pretending it was a
television set.
Of such stuff are career criminals made. At least according to The Times'
recipe.
Something else happened about that time, too: a two-week hole in the hunt
for Bucky Phillips.
In a time sequence compiled by The Associated Press that ran in this
newspaper on Sept. 9, there is a 10-day gap between the shooting of
Trooper Sean Brown and a car theft, allegedly by our Bucky, in Hanthingy.
During that time the search for Bucky was concentrated in northern Broome
County and southern Chenango, with the state police coordinating the
efforts from a command post in Colesville near Harpursville.
Motorists were stopped and cars searched round the clock.
Police helicopters prowled overhead day and night, spotlighting rural
dwellings.
Families went to bed at night behind locked doors and with loaded firearms
close at hand.
But you'd never know it from later accounts.
The Colesville CP was shut down after the Hanthingy car theft, and attention
shifted back to Chautauqua and Cattaraugus, Bucky's old stomping grounds.
Now Bucky, who vowed not to be taken alive, has been and will spend the
rest of his days in prison, unless he decides to break out.
He would be and should be looking at a lethal injection, if Pataki and his
legal eagles had known how to draft a death penalty law that didn't read
as if it had been put together by Alberto Gonzales.
(source: Dave Rossie / Commentary; The Ithaca Journal.com)