“He was a model officer. If you had the ability to clone police officers, you would’ve wanted your officer to be Joe Burson.”
That’s what Holly Springs Police Chief Tommy Keheley said of Burson, 25, who was murdered by Ansy Dolce, 29, during a traffic stop which ended with Dolce dragging the young officer to his death late Wednesday, using his car as a murder weapon.
There is an Ansy J. Dolce of the same age who was charged with at least four violent crimes in Suffolk County, New York, convicted in 2011, and released in 2015. I say “at least” four violent crimes because the Suffolk County website only has room for four crimes to be listed online, and it informs readers that if all four fields are filled in, there may be addition crimes in his record. If this is the same Ansy Dolce, 29, which is a reasonable suspicion, then in 2011, he was convicted of one count of Class B 1st. Degree Robbery, which involves either serious injury to a victim and/or possession of a deadly weapon.
He was also sentenced to a curiously long period of incarceration for his age and also to extensive parole supervision until 2020, which suggests the crime was brutal and also suggests that Dolce was a repeat offender and one with a possibly extensive and inaccessible juvenile history. He has at least three other robbery charges which probably weren’t prosecuted, since virtually all repeat offenders just get prosecuted for only their worst crime. I am working on getting Dolce’s entire record. If anyone else wants to try, here is the Suffolk County Court Chief’s Clerk’s name and phone number. I have reached out to all sectors of the County’s Supreme/County Court, the equivalent of our County Courts, and apparently nobody is at work today, and answering machine technology has not yet reached New York State, though they have discovered fax machines:
Chief Clerk
Frank L. Tropea
631-852-2120
FAX 631-852-2568
Had Ansy Dolce been prosecuted for all of his crimes (which vanishingly few criminal ever are), or had New York State taken violent armed robbery more seriously, Holly Springs might not be burying 25-year old newlywed police officer Joe Burson next week. But don’t be quick to get on a high horse: the State of Georgia is as bad as New York State in keeping the Ansy Dolces among us off the streets.
We have slightly different political and social reasons for not bothering to put the bad guys away, but in both cases, the result is the same: violent criminals walk among us far more than anyone outside the police know. Meanwhile, nobody in the judiciary, nor the legislature, in either political party, seems particularly invested in changing this situation.
And so good young men like Joe Burston continue to die unnecessarily on our streets.
The local media has done a relatively good job of covering this young officer’s murder. WSB in particular has a very moving video montage of tributes from other police departments from around the metro area. It’s nice to see this recognition of the community pulling together to honor an officer who died so young and so terribly protecting all of us.