Knee Jerks

When the news first broke this past Monday that Newark officer Michael Morgan had been fatally shot outside a strip club in Paterson at 3 AM, there was much speculative nonsense on the online news sites from nameless pinheads. The speculation centered on why he was at a Paterson strip club at 3 AM.

Being outside a Paterson strip club at 3 AM may not be the wisest thing to do, but nobody – and certainly not a police officer – deserves to be fatally shot for doing so.

As it turns out, the reason that Morgan was at the strip club was because he was with a group of fellow officers, celebrating a birthday. Again, perhaps not the wisest time and place for a birthday party but certainly nothing like the inappropriate behavior suggested by anonymous internet trolls.

The shooting arose from an attempted robbery of the officer and a companion. Newark Mayor Cory Booker got it right when he said, "Some two-bit criminals stole his life from his family, from the community and from his country. And for what? Some credit cards. Some chump change."

Good police work has at least one of those two-bit criminals in custody as we write. But we remain annoyed at the clueless knee-jerk comments from the online knee jerks.