No more folded flags. Please.
When a cop is murdered, the world becomes less safe.
A Philadelphia police officer, a husband and father of two, was gunned down last weekend by a man who had been acquitted of a homicide charge years earlier. Inside the jail, I heard defendants brag about beating homicide cases. Now another family is living with the consequences of a murder.
I imagine uniformed personnel arriving at the newly widowed woman's home, perhaps in a marked vehicle, and walking to her door. Maybe a priest accompanied them. Another nightmare made real. Another child will stand stoic beside his grieving mother among a sea of blue, holding his father's hat.
Officer Shane Seiber, 40, a 10-year police veteran and Air Force veteran who served two tours in Iraq, was shot three times early on October 10 while responding to a report of a man with a gun in West Philadelphia. His partner was shot 12 times and remains hospitalized. Seiber leaves behind a wife, a 7-year-old son, and a 3-year-old daughter.
The flags went to half-staff. The department started planning another funeral.
The man charged with killing him is Eric Lewis. According to the arrest report, Lewis told officers he shot them because they were white. He told a Black female officer at the hospital that if she had responded, “we would have just had a conversation.” He made racist remarks to the white officers and bragged that he made more money than they did.
The officers were responding to a 911 call about a man with a gun. According to investigators, Lewis approached them, became aggressive, and opened fire.
Where is the outrage over those details? Where is the national condemnation? Killing a cop has become a celebrated sport among the worst people this country has to offer. The same crowd that spent years calling for defunding the police now treats dead officers as the price of “progress.”
Lewis had been charged in connection with a 2019 homicide. He was acquitted in 2023. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner responded to the latest shooting with a video blaming police misconduct for the earlier case falling apart.
But that doesn't answer the questions surrounding Lewis's criminal history, his prior arrests for assault and gun offenses, or what happened before two police officers were shot on a Philadelphia porch.
I spent 14.5 years inside Allegheny County Pretrial Services writing bail recommendations that helped determine who walked out of jail. After the grant money arrived, release became the product. Non-monetary bonds for violent cases became normal.
In my experience, reducing the jail population became more important than protecting victims, police officers, and the communities they serve. The numbers looked good for the funders. The victims paid the price. Some with their lives.
Philadelphia's Pretrial Services came to tour our office. We were the national model the multimillion-dollar grants had built. Janice Dean led the tour. She told the Philadelphia employees that a person's criminal record tells you nothing about what they might do next and that nearly everyone should be released.
They pushed back. Hard.
They challenged her arguments, questioned her reasoning, and refused to buy the garbage she was selling. She couldn't defend her position against people who actually understood the consequences of releasing dangerous defendants.
Right in front of her, those same employees told me that if I ever moved to Philadelphia, they wanted me working in their office.
Why? Because I answered their questions honestly. No grant-funded talking points. No political agenda. Just logic, common sense, and public safety.
A few years after Philadelphia's uncomfortable visit to the Burgh, Dean sent an email celebrating that those same employees had been pushed out and that the rest of Philadelphia's office had gotten on board with the grant-funded, non-monetary release agenda.
There was even a judicial review involving disciplinary action against personnel who continued setting monetary bonds and refusing to recommend release in violent cases.
The people who came to tour our office that day cared about public safety. They cared about victims. They cared about the communities they were supposed to protect.
From what I witnessed, Dean and the leadership of my office had a different priority.
Money.
We were the showcase. People came from across the country to see how we operated. My office took the model on the road, promoting it to other jurisdictions. There were even grant-funded trips to Hawaii that leadership bragged about.
The people who challenged the model were pushed aside. The people who embraced it were celebrated.
And now another police officer is dead. Look at Philadelphia. The questions about accountability, criminal histories, and public safety aren't confined to Allegheny County.
In 2009, when three Pittsburgh police officers were shot and killed, I attended the burial of one of them. High-ranking Philadelphia police officers had come to help Pittsburgh plan the funerals and send its fallen officers off with honor.
I stood close enough to hear a Pittsburgh officer in a white uniform shirt thank one of the Philadelphia commanders.
“You're welcome,” the commander replied.
Then he added, “Sadly, we've had lots of experience with these.”
That was 17 years ago.
Seventeen years later, we're still burying police officers.
The policies got worse. The body count kept rising.
In a country where non-monetary bonds have become routine, even in violent cases, and prosecutors champion policies that put more defendants back on the streets, it's remarkable that anyone is still willing to put on the uniform.
They know the risk. They still show up.
And the rest of us keep watching the flags fold and the horses ride by while the people who built and defended these policies act surprised when another officer doesn't come home.
When a cop is murdered, the world becomes less safe.
No more folded flags. No more riderless horses. No more wives answering the door to hear that their husbands are never coming home. No more children growing up without their fathers. No more families destroyed while the numbers look better on grant reports.
The people who created and defended these policies owe the public answers about their consequences.
Because the question isn't whether another officer will be murdered.
It's how many more families will have to bury someone they love before those responsible for the system are held accountable.
Kelly Rae Robertson is an investigative journalist, whistleblower, and former Allegheny County bail investigator who spent 14.5 years inside Pennsylvania's criminal justice system. She advocates for victims of violent crime, law enforcement officers, and accountability in pretrial release practices.
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