What Crime Do You Fear The Most?

Whenever I hear of a terrorist attack it makes me think of what crime I fear most. During my 13 and a half year U.S. Air Force career I always feared of being a victim of a terrorist attack. However, is a terrorist attack the crime I fear most? I’m not so sure. I actually think murder is the crime I fear the most. In this paper I will discuss terrorist attacks and murder to come to a conclusion on why I feel that way.

On June 25th, 1996, a sewage truck packed with explosives exploded near an eight story living complex in Dhahran killing 19 U.S. military members. I was a young 20-year-old Airman at the time stationed at Dyess AFB, TX, fresh out of boot camp and technical training. Word reached back that while we had members from our unit injured, they were only minor. This event really hit home with me, thinking wow, I could have been there and been killed. A little over four years later, as a member of a Security Forces unit at Eielson AFB, AK, we received word of the U.S.S. Cole bombings off the coast of Yemen on October 12th, 2000. Now being in the Air Force it didn’t hit us directly but we felt sympathy for our fallen brothers and sisters along with their families. I’m sure they felt the same way for us after the Khobar Towers attack in 1996. During both these events it was scary to think about dying just doing your job, but if that’s what my job asked me to do so be it.

What’s even more harrowing than the thought of dying in a terrorist attack is the thought of being murdered. According to The Disaster Center’s Rothstein Catalogue for Disaster Planning there were 217,793 murders from 1996 – 2008. That’s an average of 16,753 per year, 1,396 per month, and 47 per day in the United States alone. That’s not only scary but chilling. The possibilities are endless on how one could be murdered. Who would have ever thought of the appalling details in the Jeffrey Dahmer or Bind, Torture, Kill (BTK) Killer cases? Those are the types of things you only see in fiction movies, or so we thought. To think of a human being doing that to another human being is appalling to me. It sends chills down my spine thinking about if it ever would happen to me, a friend, or a loved one.

Friends and families suffering with the loss of a loss of a loved one and the details of events involved due to criminal murder saddens my heart. Dying for your country or protecting innocent civilians is an honorable way to move on to the next life and while difficult it is still probably a bit easier to cope with the loss. A lot of people say bring the troops back home but it seems to me they are almost safer over there than they are right here in their homeland. If you add up those killed in the attacks on Pearl Harbor, September 11th, Khobar Towers, the U.S.S. Cole, and those that have died in both wars you still have a number less than the average murders per year right here in the United States. As debate on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq rages on, the average of 47 murders per day keeps painting a haunting image in my mind. Therefore, murder is the crime I fear the most.