Elmer Smith: FOP wall is running out of room

THE BLACK crepe above the entrance to Fraternal Order of Police headquarters is, by now, a semipermanent fixture.

Just inside, a framed color photo of slain officer John Pawlowski in uniform rests on a table draped in a black cloth. Above his head, black and white photos of 84 slain officers line one wall. Prayer cards reserve the few spaces that aren't already covered by a photo.

Pawlowski, 25, father of a yet unborn child, is the latest inductee into this fraternity of the fallen. But as the place-holding prayer cards attest, no one expects the carnage to end here.

"We're running out of room," said Rich Costello, a veteran policeman and FOP official.

"It's not like a spike in crime as much as it is a steady stream. I've never seen anything like this before and I've been around a long time," Costello said.

Long enough to have survived a gunshot wound and to have earned a pension and a future out of the line of fire. But not long enough to remember a time when the streets claimed the lives of eight on-duty cops in three years.

Pawlowski and his partner, Mark Klein, were responding to a "disturbance on the highway" call when they encountered Rasheed Scruggs near the SEPTA station at Broad and Olney. They ordered Scruggs to take his hands out of his pockets, according to police.

Scruggs, 33, a career criminal, fired a shot from inside his coat, police said. In the ensuing gunfight, Pawlowski took a fatal shot just above the top of his bulletproof vest.

He died at Albert Einstein Medical Center, where doctors managed to save the life of Scruggs, whose heart reportedly had stopped twice during the night.

"He wasn't hit enough," an emotional Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told reporters. "That's the only thing that matters. I don't care."

Was it the right thing to say? Of course not.

But what is the right thing for Ramsey to say when so many officers under his command have been slain, often by violent offenders who have been arrested repeatedly?

I have criticized Ramsey for statements he has made in the media. But he has a well-earned reputation for sensitivity as a cop and as a supervisor in Chicago, Washington and here.

That history presents a more accurate picture of the man than words spoken in anguish.

FOP President John J. McNesby's words were more measured yesterday, but the frustration and anguish were easy to read between the lines.

"He did everything by the textbook," McNesby said of Pawlowski. "So, what do we say when they do everything right and this happens?

"[Scruggs] should never have been on the street with his record. They've got to be able to put people like this in a place where they don't get out."

Scruggs, whose rap sheet includes several weapons offenses, somehow was able to arm himself. Police say they recovered Scruggs' .357 Magnum and 19 shell casings at the shootout scene.

Yet the right to own guns has become so sacrosanct in Pennsylvania that the Legislature rises up in righteous indignation when lawmakers from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh ask them to consider even the most innocuous restrictions on gun ownership.

Freshman state Rep. Brendan Boyle told me he is careful about even using the term gun crimes in legislation he is about to offer to prohibit parole for repeat violent offenders.

"There are people in our Legislature who get upset if you mention 'repeat offenders who use guns,' " Boyle said.

"I just talk about preventing parole for repeat violent offenders in general. There is a strong sentiment for that. Gov. Rendell has said he would sign it."

Boyle had scheduled a hearing on the bill for this Thursday. But it has been postponed.

"We set this up a month ago," he said. "But a lot of my witnesses won't be available.

"The irony is that many of them will be at the funeral for Officer Pawlowski." *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith