“Be aware.”
That’s what was going through the minds of local law enforcement officers following the murders of four police officers. They were keeping an eye out for the killer.
After a gunman shot four Lakewood police officers in a coffee shop just south of Tacoma on Sunday, bulletins quickly arrived at police and sheriff’s offices in Southwest Washington.
Skamania County Undersheriff Dave Cox wasn’t surprised that his deputies were on the lookout for a Tacoma-area suspect.
“Oh, no,” Cox said. “Something like that in the Pacific Northwest, if there’s a suspect loose, everybody is looking. As soon as that release went out, I can guarantee: Everybody was looking for him.
“We’re just a real mobile society now,” Cox said, “which makes it much more critical for law enforcement to be aware.”
And the shootings near Tacoma are a stark reminder of another side of awareness: officers looking out for their own safety.
“We haven’t officially sat everybody down, but an incident such as this reminds us all to not be complacent,” Cox said.
“From time to time, we do review officer-killed summaries from the FBI,” Cox said. “We may take 15 or 20 minutes and talk about different scenarios, and hopefully glean some lessons learned.”
Still …
“I don’t know what those officers could have done to prevent that from happening,” Cox said. “I just don’t know.”
“The cases that are more tactical, like serving a search warrant, are easy to debrief,” said Camas Police Chief Mitch Lackey. “But an ambush murder in a coffee shop: What would you say to someone?
“It’s impossible to have your guard up all the time,” Lackey said as he recalled a 2002 shooting spree on the East Coast. Victims of the sniper shootings in Washington D.C., were putting gas in the car, getting coffee, on a lunch break.
“Police are out there in the public every day,” Lackey said.
“The opposite approach is to drive around like an armored car driver all day,” and that’s not how police work is done in this country, Lackey said.
The tragedy is another reminder that “We are always susceptible to certain things when we wear a uniform,” said Sgt. Jason Perdue of the Battle Ground Police Department. “We’re visible for a reason: We’re here to help our community. That makes us visible to these kinds of things as well.
“That’s what drew his attention,” Perdue said, referring to the killer. “But we can’t hide from the public.”
Perdue said that Battle Ground hasn’t changed any protocols or guidelines in the wake of Sunday’s murders.
The fact that the slain officers were working at their laptop computers before heading out on patrol has become a topic of discussion in law enforcement circles.
Trooper Steve Schatzel, spokesman for the local Washington State Patrol office, has heard rumors of possible precautionary guidelines around the state, although he’s not sure about local implications.
“Since the Lakewood officers had laptops and were working there in a public place,” Schatzel said, there’s talk “that we’re going to be more cautious about when we’re using our computers. And in the cars, the awareness level is going to go up.”
Similar discussions have already started at the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. It’s not uncommon for deputies to sit in their patrol cars to write police reports. Now sheriff’s office personnel are wondering whether performing computer-related tasks in public places and in deputies’ patrol cars is wise.
“It’s still too new” to say how it will change deputies’ duties, said Clark County sheriff’s Sgt. Scott Schanaker. “It’s going to cause a lot of conversation.”
All agencies share a sense of loss.
Ronald Owens was a trooper with the State Patrol before going to the Lakewood department, which made the incident hit even closer to home, Schatzel said.
“In this profession, we spend too much time with black tape put over our badge because we lose too many officers,” said the 19-year WSP veteran. “You just hate losing people. You get tired of losing people.”
“Whether it’s a rural town with one police chief or an agency with 500 or 600 sworn officers, when one falls, it hurts deep,” Skamania Undersheriff Cox said.
The incident also is a reminder of the sort of work they all signed up for all
“All our staff internalizes this: There but for the grace of God go I,” Camas Police Chief Lackey said. “In all emergency services, you come to work, and in the back of your mind — and your family’s — you know any day disaster can strike.”
“When you go to work in the morning, you hope you come home,” Cox said. “Thinking about it keeps you coming home.”
