OFFICER DOWN

DEATHS of police officers in the line of duty have not occurred often
in Toledo, but the senseless killing early Wednesday of a veteran
vice detective, allegedly by a 15-year-old boy with an extensive
criminal record, leads us to believe that too little is being done to
deter juvenile criminals.

Toledoans have a right to question what a 15-year-old was doing on
the street at 2 in the morning with a gun - particularly a youth who
has a string of arrests that include carrying a concealed weapon and
several drug offenses.

Now a police officer is dead because juvenile authorities let a
dangerous individual slip under their radar. That's an outrage, both
to the community and to the slain officer. He should have been in an
institution for delinquents.

Detective Keith Dressel, 35, a 13-year veteran, was on routine patrol
undercover when he was shot in a near North Side neighborhood. As
Police Chief Michael Navarre put it, the work of officers assigned to
vice and narcotics investigations is, "a very, very dangerous job."
And it was not surprising that Detective Dressel was not wearing a
protective vest because such attire, Chief Navarre observed, can
"blow their cover."

The risk of injury and death is one police officers, especially those
in undercover work, take for granted, although such acceptance does
not make the loss any easier for Detective Dressel's wife and two
young children.

Amazingly, given the danger involved, it has been more than 36 years
since the last Toledo officer died on duty, and that was a case that
had a profound effect on the city for a long time.

Early in the morning of Sept. 18, 1970, Patrolman William Miscannon,
33, was shot in the head as he sat in a paddy wagon on Junction
Avenue at Dorr Street. The incident, which came at the height of
racial tumult experienced by Toledo and many other urban centers,
touched off a gun battle at the nearby Black Panther headquarters.

The 25-year-old black man charged with killing Officer Miscannon, who
was white, eventually went free after two trials ended in hung juries
marked by conflicting testimony. Ironically, the outcome put a
sizable dent in the Black Panthers' contention that the
white-dominated legal system was stacked inevitably against them.

In Wednesday's shooting, there is no racial issue, as both the
alleged shooter and the slain officer were white. But weapons in the
hands of children and the scourge of plentiful drugs on the street
are among today's most pressing urban problems, perhaps surpassed
only by lack of parental supervision for many youths, rich and poor alike.

In that perilous confluence stand police officers like Keith Dressel,
who risk their lives daily to protect the public. The best that can
be done now is to accord him a funeral consistent with the high
respect the community has for its safety personnel.

Detective Dressel, the 31st Toledo officer to die in the line of duty
since 1880, might be alive today if the courts had done their job.