Our Country Was Not Founded By Men With Guns and Buckets of Shit

Rick Fisher

Last year, I met Rick Fisher at a heavily attended Bangor Borough meeting, when three volunteer fire companies were on the war path, ready to scalp its Council members. Rick was Bangor's zoning officer, but also did code enforcement in other Slate Belt municipalities like Upper Mount Bethel and Portland. He was giving it all up that night to move West and become a male stripper or bottom-feeding blogger.

"I thought all the people were here to say goodbye to me," he said when firefighters left before the announcement of his impending departure. "I forgot. I'm a zoning officer," he joked.

Today, that's more sad than funny. Ross Township's zoning officer is dead. He died in a hail of bullets after dispossessed property owner Rockne Newell allegedly shoot through the walls of a municipal building during a supervisors' meeting. Two innocent citizens participating in their government by attending a meeting were killed, too. Three others were wounded.

Most of us reacted with horror to this tragedy. But not West Easton troublemaker and Borough Council candidate Tricia Mezzacappa. She instead penned a letter to The Express Times, portraying Newell as a victim of government tyranny, just like her. "I thank the Lord that I have had the patience to continue putting up with this tyranny," she writes, certainly hinting that might one day ran out of patience and who knows what will happen then.

It's a disgusting letter, but many of the numerous comments that follow online actually support her view. Frequent commenters there, like "Amend Wun" and "Tag42Day" believe that's because Mezzacappa was creating all kinds of bogus online identities to pretend she has support that she lacks. I tend to agree with this assessment because many of those comments also trash Mezzacappa's enemies, i.e. West Easton Boro Council Prez Kelly Gross and yours truly.

Moderators must share this assessment, too. They've been busily deleting many of the names she uses to comment. Not just the comments, but the actual accounts.

But Mezzacappa fooled one person. Rick Fisher. He posted this comment tonight, giving the perspective of a zoning officer in that neck of the woods.

I am shocked that so many people feel there is justification for homicide in our society. In this particular case, these were people who were doing their jobs, enforcing the laws that protect your wells that you drink from, your property values that you cherish, and your safety- whether it be adopting an ordinance that lowers a speed limit or enforcing the Clean Streams Law and Sewage Facilities Act which protects your water supplies, your lakes, rivers, and streams. No one deserves to die for doing their job. These are public servants, regular folk like you and I, most are volunteers who choose to better their community rather than sit on the doorstep and bitch about everything that is wrong with our society.

The zoning officer was a paid public servant. He chose a profession that helps people and protects their safety. He was good at his work and was careful in his decisions. He never wanted to violate a person's rights and so he took care with his decisions and always acted in a professional manner. He did not deserve his fate.

I worked with the zoning officer who was murdered. I sometimes sat at the desk across from him and more than once we drove to sites together to improve our safety. Is there a justification for killing him for doing his job? When two neighbors feud over a property line, a fence, or when one complains that the other has turned his property into a junk yard, and we go there to do our job- is our death OK because we did our job and enforced the law by, in your view, pushing the man too far? The same law that each and every one of you would want enforced if the property filled with buckets of shit was next door to your home? I bet you'd be at every Council meeting screaming to high heaven about how you can't open your windows because of the stench, how there are so many flies, and how you will never be able to sell your home as long as that man is allowed to live on his uninhabitable land.

The author of this letter is wrong wrong wrong. I know most of the people he shot at. I know one of the men who died. Did the Township secretary deserve such a tragedy for simply doing her job, to spend the rest of her life having blood and death in her memory for her long service to the citizens of that township? No, she did not. Nobody deserves to die for simply doing their job. No one deserves to be traumatized.

Rockne wasn't pushed too far. You can't push crazy too far. You just can't. Maybe he would have snapped 6 months later at the diner over his poached eggs. Maybe he would have snapped in a mall, in an Elementary school, in a movie theater, or in a grocery store. This was a man living in shed illegally, with 5-gallon pails of sewage inside and outside his shack, living on land that he knew was uninhabitable when he bought it. It was written on the deed plain as day- failed for onlot sewage disposal. He broke the law when he moved onto that property, he violated one law after another, local, state, and Federal law. He was a lawless man who didn't give a damn about anything but himself. And when his day in court finally came and he lost because he was wrong, he broke the law again- and now three men are dead.

This country was not founded by men with guns and buckets of shit. It was founded on LEGAL principle by men who based their claim for for freedom on law. They then took up arms and fought for a free country where law-abiding citizens could live in harmony. It has worked for over two hundred years.

The sewage laws were written with the understanding that the greater good for all must override the desire of one person. We have standards for sewage disposal in rural areas without city sewers. These standards must be equally enforced for all citizens in order to protect each person (even from themselves).

We talk about our constitution and then ignore it's founding principles when a crackpot attacks our own representative government. It doesn't wash. You can't have it both ways. If you want representative government then you have to allow your representatives to do their job and when they come under fire, to support them afterwards. They are the ones protecting your rights. The guy with the buckets of shit- he is the enemy of our society, a terrorist kicking over yet another pillar of our democracy. And you who speak out in support of him do so because our democracy, our constitution gives you the right of free speech. But with that right comes responsibility to think deeply on what you are going to say or write. Your words of support for a mentally unstable man who killed and injured innocent people and disrupted their lives forever do us all an injustice. Rockne did not shoot the wrong people- he was wrong to shoot at all. He had no right. He is a cold-blooded murderer. Defend him you defend the downfall of our society. You can't push crazy too far- it isn't possible.