Well, to each, his own. I chose my path, you chose the way of the hero. And they found you amusing for a while, the people of this city. But the one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying.
On one hand, it’s good to know that Darien Long isn’t going to die on the job. But on the other hand, it’s ironically unfortunate that not only has Darien Long been let go from his job, he’s also been arrested. For doing god’s work and trying to heaven forbid, actually make a mall a better and safer place.
I get all the facts that have surfaced around both the circumstances of his release as well all his arrest, but it all just doesn’t really feel that right regardless.
He’s being let go by the property under the excuse that they are making budget cuts, but the initial story seemed to insinuate that the property owners simply didn’t like the attention that his righteous fame was bringing to the area, and the best (ironic) part was that a lot of the mall’s shop owners didn’t really like the fact that he had a video camera recording everything, including the discreet sales of possible counterfeit goods. It turns out that the shop owners would rather have the mall be populated by thieves, drug dealers and prostitutes harassing patrons, rather than someone who legitimately wants to keep the place clean.
Long is aware that they’re all coming back the instant that he’s no longer guarding the property. Personally, that serves the property right, and I hope a gang war or something flares up in there, leading to the property being destroyed in the long run, because it’s a shit hole of a place to begin with, and if crooked bureaucracy is going to eliminate the one beacon of good from it, it doesn’t need to exist at all in my book.
As for Darien Long’s arrest, I get that too, but it doesn’t make it any less unfortunate. Long story short, Long is charged with assault, for tackling a person in the mall that he had at one point banned from the property who still came back anyway. There aren’t a whole lot of facts out there regarding the banishment in the first place, but given the nature of the place, people, and how Darien Long operates, I’m assuming that Long himself had declared him banned from the property, and maybe done so on camera, or taken a snapshot. But being where it is, and the already-known crooked nature of the property’s management, I’m also going to assume that there’s no official record, or police-mandated restraining order preventing the perp from being allowed onto the property.
So for all intents and purposes, Darien Long tackled an “innocent” patron, despite personal history. As unfortunate as it is, and as much as I’d like for them to do so, I’m betting the courts aren’t going to accept video of a verbal banishment in the past as grounds to dismiss the assault case. I think the only thing that saves Long in this case is if there’s clear literature stating his power and rights as the on-site security manager of the property, and very clear and unaltered time stamps of the video incidents of the initial banishment.
What I dislike about the whole scenario are all the people interviewed or quoted on the sidelines. From the shop owners who are kind of glad he’s getting the axe so that there’s no chance of there being any video evidence of them selling illegal counterfeit merchandise, to the so-called witnesses of any of Long’s physical altercations with thugs; it’s like they’re all opposed to Long’s self-imposed mission to fight the good fight, and insinuate that he’s disturbing the peace. Even in the embedded video, the witness to the fight that got Long arrested basically has this smugness in her tone, and makes sure to point out that the thug was actually getting the better of Long in the scuffle.
To me, these are most definitely people who are relishing in the fall and failure of a hero, who’s just trying to do the right thing; and I just don’t understand why people enjoy this so much. Not just exclusively in the case of Darien Long, but all sorts of celebrities, heroes, and people attempting to just do good.
