A man who initiated the gunfight that killed a Reading police officer in 2004 was free to walk the streets with an illegal, stolen firearm — because the system that claims to protect you let him out.
Andrew Smith, 46, was sentenced Monday to 12 to 24 years in state prison after a jury convicted him of illegally possessing a firearm, possessing a gun with an obliterated serial number, receiving stolen property, and conspiracy, according to the Reading Eagle. Smith was prohibited from owning a firearm because of his prior convictions — most notably, an involuntary manslaughter conviction for the death of Officer Michael Wise II, who was shot in the back of the head during a gunfight Smith started on June 5, 2004. Smith was acquitted of murder but convicted of involuntary manslaughter in late 2005 and sentenced in early 2006 to 13½ to 23 years. He didn't serve the max. He walked. And then he got caught with a stolen gun with the serial number ground off.
Officer Wise was 32, working undercover, the first on-duty Reading officer slain in more than three decades. His killer served his minimum and was released back into the community — armed, predictably, and illegally.
This is the pattern: the system empties prisons and defunds police while the political class ensures it never goes without protection of its own.
Consider Coos County, Oregon, where Commissioner Rod Taylor — a man who proudly told conservative radio he was at the Capitol on January 6 — allegedly had a 59-year-old retired police officer handcuffed and hauled to jail for yelling "Trump's a loser!" on a public sidewalk. The Oregonian reports that Neil Daniels, a retired cop and probation officer, had protested outside county headquarters roughly a dozen times without incident. But when Taylor was hosting a guest who falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, Daniels' heckling allegedly sent the commissioner into a rage. Taylor called police. Officer Jessica Pierce arrested Daniels for disorderly conduct. The district attorney refused to pursue charges — because there was no crime, just a citizen exercising his First Amendment rights on a public sidewalk.
Taylor denies he demanded the arrest or was enraged. But the facts on the ground speak for themselves: a politician's feelings resulted in a citizen in handcuffs, while a cop-killer in Pennsylvania had to actually get caught with a stolen gun before the system would act.
Daniels has filed a $75,000 lawsuit. He'll probably settle, and taxpayers will foot the bill for an official who couldn't tolerate criticism.
That's the two-tier system in plain view. The ruled get predators released into their neighborhoods. The rulers get armed security and the power to deploy it against dissenters. When a cop-killer walks and a heckler gets cuffed, the question isn't whether the system is broken. It's who it was built to serve.
It wasn't you.
