Last Night

Last night was not a good night for Roc to come home late.
Last night an NYPD Officer was shot in the Bronx.
The cop was not my husband, but as so many of you know, when you hit one, you hit us all.
The NYPD Officer who was shot at is Ivan Marcano. Officer Marcano was off-duty at the time and just happened to see a robbery going down as he and his girlfriend were driving through a section of the Bronx not known for Bake Sales. He got out of his car and approached the suspects, without his bulletproof vest, he showed his shield, and identified himself as a cop. Then all hell broke loose and the Officer was shot; however he managed to return fire and kill one of the suspects.
All this over eighty dollars.
Eighty dollars.
The Officer is okay; he's in pain, but in the hospital, and he'll be fine. Mayor Bloomberg went to visit him, and afterwards stated that the cop was the 12th NYPD officer to be shot this year.
This ridiculousness occurred only a day after Nassau County cop Arthur Lopez was murdered in cold blood on the Cross Island Parkway. For those of you not familiar with NYC and the surrounding areas, Nassau County is the County right next to Queens; it is sometimes referred to as the Sixth Borough. NYPD Officers are often in close contact with Nassau Officers and the truth is that a ton of Nassau County Cops were once NYPD Officers themselves.
I tweeted about this last night, and kept tagging my tweets with my very own made-up hashtag: #ENOUGH.
ENOUGH!
ENOUGH!
ENOUGH!
Last night, a SCW Member on Facebook approached me with this question: what do we do? How can we cause change to occur?
In your town, city, or municipality, you can make sure that when you vote, you vote for Justices who are tough on crime. Don't even look at whether they're a Republican or a Democrat, an Independent, or some Party this Country has not even concocted yet. Think outside the box. Just vote for the Judge that will be the toughest on violent crimes; the person that may make your Officer's day a little bit easier.  Keep in mind that Officer Lopez's killer was out on parole, and many people feel that he should not have been.
In my City, I have posed a question to all of the candidates in the upcoming NYC Mayoral Elections: Are you willing to go on a ride-along with the NYPD in one of NYC's most notorious (read: dangerous) neighborhoods? If not, why should you get my vote? I think it's fair to say that you can't be my husband's Boss if you haven't been there yourself.
What else can we do? We can pray. Never underestimate the power of prayer.
We can support each other in every way possible.
And from there I'm open to suggestions...feel free to brainstorm with me here, on facebook, and Twitter.
In the meantime, hug your cop. Hard.