KYW-TV, Channel 3, the CBS owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia, reported on a prayer vigil for slain Police Officer John Pawlowski held Saturday:

Loved Ones Hold Prayer Vigil For Philadelphia Police Officer Killed In Line Of Duty

By CBS3 Staff | February 12, 2022 | 10:11 PM EST

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Loved ones are remembering a Philadelphia Police officer killed in the line of duty 13 years ago. They held a prayer vigil Saturday for officer John Pawlowski.

He was shot at Broad and Olney Streets 13 years ago on Sunday.

Officer Pawlowski was responding to a dispute between a cab driver and a man with a weapon. He was just 25 years old when he was killed.

There’s more at the original, but if the “anti-racist” Philadelphia Inquirer covered it, a site search for John Pawlowski didn’t reveal it, though I’m certain that a memorial service for a white police officer killed by a black previously convicted felon had nothing, nothing at all, to do with that editorial decision.

Officer Pawlowski was killed when he approached Rasheed Scrugs, a convicted felon, who had been threatening Emmanuel Cesar, 32, a Haitian immigrant who had been in Philadelphia for six years at the time, and who knew Mr Scrugs as a fellow “hack” – unlicensed cabbies who use their own cars and vie for fares near the SEPTA transit station at Broad Street and Olney Avenue.

But on the night of February 13, 2009, Cesar testified, Scrugs was on foot and angry. He said Scrugs came up to him on the northeast corner of the intersection, grabbed his shirt by the neck and demanded to know how much money he had made that day.

“I said, ‘I’m not telling you that,'” Scrugs testified, and said Scrugs responded by slamming him back against the security grate of a closed store several times.

Cesar said he got loose and began walking across Broad to get away and Scrugs followed, yelling, “You better not be calling the cops. If you call the cops I’ll shoot you and the cops.”

When the officers approaching Mr Scrugs ordered him to remove his hands from his pockets, he instead fired a handgun concealed in his pocket, striking Officer Pawlowski.

Mr Scrugs:

had been arrested nine times for crimes including robbery, car theft, weapons offenses and drugs, according to police and court records.

He was convicted of a 1997 armed robbery and sentenced to five to 10 years in prison. He was released in 2002, but he violated his parole in 2004 and was sent back to prison for an additional year.

Why not back to prison for the entire rest of his sentence?

Even if Mr Scrugs had been locked up for the maximum of ten years, he’d still have been out at the time he murdered Officer Pawlowski. That he had not in any way been reformed, simply not caught, is attested to by the fact he was carrying a six-shot, .357-caliber revolver, a felony for a previously convicted felon, and police found 19 packets of crack cocaine in his pockets when he was arrested; that’s felony distribution weight. He was apparently high on PCP at the time.

This guy was, as then-Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey called him, a “A career criminal,” “Cold-blooded killer,” and “Unsalvageable.”

Lynne Abraham, then the District Attorney, and her office put Mr Scrugs on trial for capital murder. Mr Scrugs changed his plea to guilty on the first day of the trial, leaving his attorneys to ask the jury to sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole, rather than the death penalty. They told the jury what a poor, poor soul Mr Scrugs was, how he’d shown remorse, had ‘troubled formative years, had an IQ of just 80, and might have been brain damaged from years of using PCP, or ‘angel dust.’ The jury deadlocked on the penalty phase, which left Common Pleas Court Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes no choice but to sentence Mr Scrugs to life without the possibility of parole. Officer Pawlowski’s family was distraught that he wasn’t sentenced to death, but it really doesn’t matter: other than three men who voluntarily gave up their appeals, no one has been executed in the Keystone State since the 1960s.

One thing is obvious: while Mr Scrugs would not have been on parole or probation from his previous conviction at the time he killed Officer Pawlowski, if he had been treated more seriously by District Attorney Abraham for his previous offenses, he could, and should have been in jail for longer than he was. Remember, Lewis Jordan, a.k.a. John Lewis, had been treated leniently by the office of then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham, and was out on the street when he could, and should, have been in jail. On October 31, 2007, Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy walked into a Dunkin’ Donuts, the scene of a previous robbery, to check on it, just as Mr Jordan was attempting to rob the place; Mr Jorden shot Officer Cassidy in the head, killing him. Had law enforcement treated Mr Jordan seriously, rather than dropping the charges if he’d attend drug counseling courses, he would have been in jail, and Officer Cassidy would have gone home to his wife that Hallowe’en.

Treating criminals leniently has a consequence, and the killing of Officer Pawlowski was only one example. Giving these thugs a break too often results in innocent people being killed. Treating Mr Scrugs leniently wound up getting him locked away for the rest of his life; did previous breaks from the District Attorney really wind up doing him a favor?

When we catch the bad guys, we need to lock them up, lock them up for as long as the law allows. Perhaps they will learn a lesson, and perhaps not, but one thing is certain: as long as they are behind bars, they aren’t out on the streets and a menace to the public.