Monday Morning Crisis Quarterback

Forza Coffee in Parkland, Washington reopened yesterday.  At 8:14 AM, they relit their "Open" sign, two weeks to the minute after a gunman shot and killed four police officers from the neighboring Lakewood Police Department inside the coffee shop.  The line was out the door.  They served 1100 cups of coffee.

This reminded me of something in my own life.  Several years ago, when I lived in Pittsburgh, a man drove through the southern suburbs seeking out people of color, immigrants and Jews and shooting at them.  Several people died.  A synagogue was shot at and swastikas drawn on the walls.  That night, I went to that synagogue for services.  I had never been there before, and I haven't been back.  But that night, the place was packed.

When we intentionally visit someplace where a crime has occurred, we are accomplishing several things.  We are making a statement that we will not be intimidated -- this was certainly true in the case of the synagogue.  We are supporting an establishment that has experienced a trauma, just as we might if something terrible happened to a neighbor or friend.  We are offering moral support.

We are also reclaiming the space from the trauma that occurred there.  Very often, people who experience trauma avoid the place where it happened, sometimes for a very long time.  The place brings back vivid and unpleasant memories, so they simply choose not to expose themselves to it.  Going back represents a graduation of sorts.  It means that while we remember what happened there, we are not afraid of the space anymore.  By having something positive occur there, such as an outpouring of customers or worshippers, we are building a new, positive association to go alongside the negative one that will always be there.

That Forza branch will probably do a brisk business for a long time now.  It is a memorial to those who died, a place for the living to remember, and a symbol of the community coming together.  No one's going to want it to go out of business for a long, long time.

Early this morning, Seattle Police shot and killed the alleged gunman in the murders of four Lakewood, Washington police officers.  Whatever motivated this man to do what he did, he will never hurt another person again.  So ends the story.

The story doesn't really end there, however, because there is plenty of traumatic stress for those involved and plenty of follow-up news coverage for the rest of us.  The long process of coming to terms with what happened is just beginning for those who witnessed the shootings and the families and fellow officers of the victims.

As this story has unfolded, a lot of anger has bubbled to the surface.  It seems that this anger is pointed, broadly, in two directions.

The first is at the gunman.  This makes sense -- he is the one ultimately responsible for his own actions.  It comes as no surprise to those of us who watch police dramas on TV that the suspect did not come out of his confrontation with police alive.  That is not to say in any way that his shooting was not appropriate, but rather that, when hunting for a cop killer, the preservation of his life is not the highest priority on everyone's mind.  Generally, they come quietly or they come dead.

The second place that anger is directed is at Mike Huckabee, or more broadly at the criminal justice system.  Huckabee, when he was governor of Arkansas, granted clemency to the alleged killer.  This was one of what appear to be a large number of opportunities that were missed, both before the Arkansas clemency and after, to keep this man away from the public.

We all know that Mike Huckabee, or this or that prosecutor, or this or that judge, did not pull the trigger in these shootings.  By being angry and blaming them, however, we are reassuring ourselves that this could have been prevented.  We need to do that, because the alternative is too scary to fathom -- that there are people out there who just want to kill other people, we don't know who they are, and they can't be stopped.  By blaming these officials, we tell ourselves that if only everyone did their jobs we would be safe.  I have no idea whether any one or all of these people should have done anything differently, given the information they had at the time.  I do know that even if they had, they would not have stopped every violent sociopath out there.

If you want to understand the primal fear we are shunting to the side, try talking to the young child of a police officer this week.  They will tell you they don't want their mom or dad going out for coffee.  The bogeyman is real.  The one in Washington may be gone, but we don't want to reckon with the idea that there may actually be other ones hiding in the closet.

By now you've probably heard about the murder of four uniformed Lakewood, Washington police officers in a coffee shop yesterday morning.  There seems to be no doubt that the victims were targeted because they were police officers.  Police have a suspect and have been trying to find him in a series of very visible but unsuccessful attempts today.

A lot has been, will be, and should be written about these courageous men and women and their surviving families, including nine children.  The spontaneous outpouring of grief and support is amazing.  The owner of the coffee shop chain where the shootings occurred is an ex-cop himself, and he said yesterday that since his employees were unhurt he was mostly concerned for the families.  Who can blame him?

But the fact of the matter is that there were a handful of other people in the coffee shop when the shootings occurred yesterday -- both staff and patrons.  Police have said that it took some time to get full statements from them because it was so hard for them to describe what they saw right away.  Who can blame them, either?

It is not uncommon for survivors of shootings, particularly shootings in which multiple people are killed, to feel survivor's guilt.  They wonder why they lived when others died.  They feel that if only they had done more, they might have saved others.  Most often, they find some solace in the knowledge that everyone there was a target, and had they done anything different they might well be among the dead.

This situation is a little different.  The other patrons were not, in fact, targets themselves.  It seems pretty clear that the gunman was looking to shoot cops.  It is not as simple as realizing that they had to save themselves.  But in fact, they did have to save themselves.  While they may not have been targets to begin with, had they confronted the gunman they undoubtedly would have become targets.

When all is said and done, however, four police officers are dead in a highly publicized and sensational shooting that is making the national news, and the only people in any kind of position to stop it, one might argue, were the staff and other patrons.  While we all know that we don't blame them and we don't think they could have stopped this, that probably isn't how they are feeling.  That kind of guilt can lead to isolating oneself, and that's a very bad thing to do after a traumatic incident.

Add to this the wrinkle that the gunman is still out there.  The survivors have to be concerned, at least on a gut level, for their own safety.  They are witnesses, and he clearly doesn't care much about human life.  It has to be hard to get up and go out in public under these circumstances.

Most police departments have supports in place for families of officers killed in the line of duty and also for other officers and their families who understandably have renewed fears for other officers' safety.  Fewer communities are really set up to support the civilian survivors of an incident like this.  This is a time when a community-based CISM team is critical.  I hope there is one out there, or that someone asks for one on those people's behalf.  They need our support, too.

Update:  The suspect in these murders was shot and killed by police on December 1.  Hopefully, that will alleviate some small amount of the stress the survivors are experiencing.