Philadelphia buried a cop who survived two tours in Iraq only to be gunned down on a West Philly porch — while across the river in New Jersey, another lawman stared down a hammer-wielding illegal migrant who nearly caved his skull in. The men who protect this country are under siege at home, and the policies inviting the chaos go unmentioned at the funerals.
Officer Shane Seiber came home from Iraq with one goal: join the Philadelphia Police Department. The academy rejected him. He crumpled the letter and threw it in the trash. His wife, Lisa, fished it out and submitted a new application on his behalf. He got in. That persistence defined him — until Oct. 10, when a gunman shot Seiber three times on a front porch in West Philadelphia. His partner, Officer Hector Rodriguez III, took 12 bullets and survived. Seiber "fought for his life for hours" before dying at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Commissioner Kevin Bethel told mourners Tuesday, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Hundreds of uniformed officers filled the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul. Bethel posthumously promoted Seiber to sergeant and awarded his family the Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart. Gov. Josh Shapiro praised Seiber's "omnipresent smile." Mayor Cherelle Parker, who announced a new city internship in Seiber's name, described him as a father who "melted like marshmallows" whenever his kids wanted anything. Seiber's 7-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter will grow up knowing their father "was a hero, not simply because of how he died, but because of how he chose to live," Bethel said.
Six days before Seiber was killed, another attack on law enforcement unfolded just across the Delaware River — and the underlying cause got the usual soft treatment. Reinieri De Jesus Licona Amador, a 27-year-old Honduran in the country illegally, was pulled over in Gibbsboro, NJ, after a license plate check flagged him as undocumented, the New York Post reported. When ICE agents in full uniform approached his car, Amador grabbed a hammer from the backseat, climbed onto the passenger door frame, and repeatedly swung at them. One agent said he saw his "life flash" before his eyes. Another said the attack would have caused "serious, and potentially fatal, injuries." Agents pepper-sprayed Amador into submission. A second Honduran in the car — already under a final order of removal from an immigration judge — was sitting in the passenger seat the whole time.
The Inquirer's coverage of Seiber's funeral honored a good man and a devoted officer. What it didn't do was connect any dots. The Post covered the ICE attack straight but kept it isolated — one more crime story, not a policy story. Neither outlet asked the obvious question: what do both attacks have in common? Lawmen in the Philadelphia region are being hunted — one fatally, one nearly so — and the political class that fills the pulpits at funerals is the same class that keeps the border open and the anti-police climate fed.
Amador has been charged with forcibly assaulting officers with a dangerous weapon and sits at the Elizabeth Detention Facility. His passenger, already ordered removed by a judge, was still on American streets on Oct. 4. Seiber is dead. Rodriguez is recovering from a dozen gunshot wounds. The internship in Seiber's name won't bring him back. The question that hangs over the cathedral and the Camden County traffic stop alike is simple: how many more funerals before the people who write the laws stop protecting everyone except the people who enforce them?
