Criminals

Suspected Bulger Victim

The big news today of Whitey Bulger's capture by the FBI is laced with the predictable fascination at his cunning and ability to escape capture. Predators are cunning. Human beings are predators to a greater or lesser degree.

I was reminded of a childhood experience. When I was a preschooler, I was riding along with my father in our 1950 Plymouth. It was Saturday. He was doing errands for my mother. My father was a policeman. As we rounded a corner, he slowed the car and pulled over to the curb. He got out of the car and told me to get into the back seat. I scrambled over the front seat to the back.

My father returned with another man, who got into the car. "We're going to the station," my father said to me. I was thrilled. The guys at the station gave me candy bars and nickels. A great place. After a short stay at the station, my father said we should get going. On the way home, he explained to me that the man he had picked up was an escapee from Walpole prison, an armed robber, whom my father had previously arrested. "He's a tough customer, but we hit it off pretty well." 

The conflictual relationship that human beings have with law and order impacts us all. One man's justice is another man's injustice in some cases. However, the distinguishing factor when considering the likes of Whitey Bulger is violence. This is a man who reputedly killed 17 people with his own hands. I doubt he would have stepped calmly into my father's Plymouth.

I have worked with felons over the years. Being a nurse, I have treated felons no differently from saintly people I have encountered as patients. The treatment I have received in return has been quite another story. My experience of criminals has informed me that criminality with intentional violence is indeed evil behavior, often associated with people whom I would have to describe as evil, in the sense of irreparably diseased mentally. Jeffrey Dahmer qualifies for this category. These people are worthy, in my opinion, of respectful containment by society.

Those who will romanticize Whitey Bulger are fools or exploitative scoundrels, who would do anything for profit. There is little to be learned from Whitey Bulger beyond the respect for his evil as truly dangerous and remorseless. In my opinion, those who are entranced with violent criminality would profit from looking at their own propensity for evil and its effect on their own lives.