PATHOLOGIES

First things first. We wish Pittsburgh police Cmdr. Dom Costa a speedy
recovery from a shoulder wound inflicted by a drug suspect who feigned
surrender but opened fire.

Bravely, Cmdr. Costa, a former head of the SWAT Team, was working with
hostage negotiator Sgt. Ronald Griffin to achieve a peaceful end to a
standoff at a house in Homewood.

We wish the same for SWAT Officer Thomas Huerbin, who, having no time to
use his weapon, lunged at the man to save his colleague's life and took
three slugs to his bulletproof vest. The cuts and bruises will heal; his
example of courage will endure.

The gunman, Cecil Brookins, who returned to a house after he fled for the
roof when officers arrived to serve a warrant, was brought down when
another SWAT officer shot him at least five times, critically wounding the
assailant and ending the threat to the injured officers. Twenty-six hundred
bags of heroin were found in his home, along with seven firearms.

Brookins, with a long criminal history, should have been in prison, but a
paperwork snafu set him free on June 19, 2000. The jail and the courts had
better make sure this never happens again.

Some people were saying Brookins seemed like a nice guy; others blame the
courts and jail for setting him free.

Nice guys don't deal dope; nice guys don't shoot police officers; nice guys
don't spend their lives in criminal enterprise.

The Brookins apologists, some in his family, offer evidence again of the
pathology that keeps much of the black community in the grip of poverty and
crime, namely the defiant refusal to accept responsibility for themselves
and to expect that others do the same.