When the system breaks down the people generally take care of things.

When I moved to Alaska one of the first things I heard about was the murder of a troublemaker. To my knowledge it is still unsolved.

The murder victim was a burglar, a thief, a drug addict and had a violent way about him. He was a serious nuisance and finally someone somewhere along the line got tired of his shit and simply shot him in the street.

He was walking down the street, a shot rang out and he died. Nobody was ever prosecuted for the crime as far as I know.

I remember one of the residents telling me that they heard the fatal shot and simply went back to washing dishes. The resident told me that the neighborhood became a much nicer place to live after the murder.

I am not going to condemn nor condone this act but I certainly understand it. The system had failed to protect the community so the community protected itself.

Years later I saw a similar occurrence happen in another Alaskan town. Like the other guy, the murdered man was a violent addict that had caused too much trouble and one of the locals simply got sick and tired of him and killed him.

To the best of my knowledge that crime was also unsolved.

Shortly after the murder the running joke went around that he had been shot in the head three times and the state police ruled it to be a suicide.

I certainly can not condone any of this but I won't condemn it completely. I just look at it as an example of what happens when the system breaks down and fails to protect its citizens.

I expect to see more of this in the Lower 48 as time passes. It seems that the system is doing less and less to protect the average guy and as I have seen before, when the system breaks down vigilante justice takes over.

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I recall another two murders that occurred when I lived in Alaska but both of them were robberies and one of the two was a case of s Darwin candidates stupidity.

One of the murders was a simple case of robbery. One of the nicest guys in town was driving cab and was murdered and robbed. I'm sure he wasn't carrying a whole lot of money and I'd venture the murderer was probably a druggie looking for a fix or something.

It was simply the cabbie's bad luck.

The Darwin candidate's problem was that he didn't know how to keep his mouth shut. I didn't know him very well but he took me into his confidence and told me he was going to make a killing in the cocaine business. he told me he had 10 grand saved and was flying to Anchorage to score a big amount and was returning to sell it.

Frankly I thought he was an idiot and was probably going to simply get busted shortly after he started selling the drug locally. It was either that or get robbed. He clearly didn't have the mind to deal drugs on the street. After all, he told me what he was up to and I barely knew him.

The other thing I figured as a possibility is that he would simply be mugged and wake up in an alley broke.

A couple of weeks later someone told me that this idiot had been found dead at the Anchorage dump with empty pockets. Frankly I wasn't surprised. 

My guess is that he arrived in Anchorage and hit the bars looking for some kind of big time dealer that would give him a wholesale deal. He flashed his wad of cash and someone simply decided to take it from him. He was that kind of a naive fool.

Looking back on this I think that all four of these murders probably shaped my life and taught me something. 

The first two taught me that even though you can escape punishment from the system, things can and very well may catch up with you. It probably made me behave myself to a certain degree.

The cabbie murder made me aware years later when I drove cab for a while. It made me pay attention and think before I hauled someone out of town that really didn't live there or had no business going there.

The robbery/murder that took place in Anchorage simply confirmed that you can't fix stupid. While the victim had every right to live, he seemed to work pretty hard at being stupid and getting himself killed.

Still, I do believe that all four of these were drug related in some way and reinforced my belief that using drugs was not the way to go. Because I stayed clear of the drug wars going on it may very well be the reason I have lasted this long.

As time passes and the country continues on the downhill slide I suspect we'll see an increase in robbery related murders, too.





While we are on the subject of the system breaking down, I read where there is no appreciable increase on traffic accidents when the power shuts down and traffic lights stop working.

People for the most part simply start treating traffic lights like stop signs and use the rules and etiquette for stop signs.

Just goes to show you that government is not needed as much as a lot of people think it is. 



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY