Another week, another police officer killed by a career criminal
Zachary Faria
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It is depressing to see news that a police officer was shot and suspect that the shooter was a career criminal. It is even more depressing when that suspicion is once again proven correct.
The latest example of this comes from Hermann, Missouri, where news broke early Monday morning that a shooting left one police officer dead and another wounded. Sure enough, the man who allegedly shot at officers was identified as Kenneth Lee Simpson, who has a criminal history stretching back to 2004.
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His crimes grew more violent and brazen as the years went on after facing vehicle tampering charges in 2004. That includes various criminal charges from 2006, 2013, and 2016 before landing a misdemeanor assault charge in 2017. By 2019, he was up to third-degree assault felony. A warrant for his arrest was issued in April 2022 after he failed to appear in court for various driver’s license violations. Simpson also had orders of protection from 2006 and 2010, with the 2010 order likely relating to his stalking charge.
Simpson was very clearly given one too many chances about four chances ago. He caught eight criminal charges over a seven-year stretch from 2016 to 2021 before he decided to go on the run. He was somehow given only a $5,000 bond in 2019 after his felony assault charge. And now, one police officer is dead, and another was put in the hospital.
Hermann Police Sgt. Mason Griffith, the officer Simpson killed, is now at least the sixth police officer to be shot and killed on the job in the first 10 weeks of 2023 and the fifth to have been killed by someone with an extensive criminal or otherwise violent history. This comes on the heels of three police officers being shot by a felon in Los Angeles last week. Those three officers thankfully survived. Griffith, like the other five killed this year, was not so lucky.
While liberals focus every crime discussion on criminal justice reform and “mass incarceration,” criminals emboldened by a lack of serious consequences for years of crime have become more violent and brazen. The police officers we entrust to protect and serve communities are now facing the results alongside the residents being terrorized by these criminals. That is where our crime discussions should remain focused.