As someone with family firmly rooted in Lakewood the past 40 years, there is always a sense that the community gets a bad reputation for the senseless violence that seems to boil over with far-too frequent “breaking news” crews flocking there from Seattle and – sometimes like this week – from around the nation.
I understand the scorn when reporters descend in helicopters and massive vans, with cameras and microphones and inane questions for anyone who walks into range. Several tried to interview me Monday as I wandered through the scenes at the Lakewood Police Department and at the intersection on Steele Street, just down from the Forza Coffee shop where four Lakewood Police officers were shot and killed Sunday morning.
My sister, who teaches in Lakewood’s Clover Park District, knew one of the officers because she was the police liaison for the elementary school. Her kids knew Tina Griswold well. All of the officers had children. All were stellar members of the fledgling department, only five years in the making. On Thanksgiving Day, my brother and I had waved at a Lakewood Police officer as he patrolled through my family’s quiet neighborhood. I wonder now if it was one of the officers . . .
As a longtime Seattle journalist with plenty of experience covering violent and inexplicable crime – such as the Green River killings – I never expected to be affected the way I have been by this story: like a part of my family had died. It never truly hit me how personal this was for me and many of the people I have known all my life in the Northwest – I felt as if my way of life, my home, my values, my friends, brothers and sisters, were under assault.
That all came pouring out in true tears of resolve and mourning and anguish Monday afternoon when I stood before the still-growing memorial outside the Lakewood Police Department. I have never in the world felt more a part of the community, as non-distinct and disheveled as Lakewood can seem to outsiders. Everyone there had tears, from the youngest carrying bouquets and candles, to the officers who stood side-by-side at a news conference, to even a few of the toughest folks I have known.
This is the true melting pot of our nation. Working class. Patriotic and proud. A town built on the backs of the Weyerhaeuser lumber fortune and the military might of the Army and Air Force. Hard workers and hard living rings the outskirts, and the massive Douglass firs and manicured hedges hide estates built on old money and new-age economy. Its city limits include the state’s mental hospital and Tacoma’s most exclusive country club. It is dotted by lakes, divided by a freeway, and its population ebbs and flows like the tide with a constant turnover.
But it is one, now. Lakewood is a community now like never before. If this is going to be forever known as the worst attack on law enforcement in state history, it is also going to be a watershed for a city that has been doing all it can to try to shed its image for violent crime.
As I stood looking down on the coffee shop where the officers were callously and cowardly gunned down, I realized this was only blocks from where we used to romp all over the area’s best miniature golf course. It was on the back road we used to take to the drive-in movie. Only a half mile from the restaurant my niece used to work at. Just blocks from the baseball fields where I had last coached a Pony League team in a weekend-long tournament. C-130s from McChord landing overhead. Puyallup freeway backed up to South Hill. Police directing another traffic jam.
Life goes on now in Lakewood, and there is some palpable relief that the suspect has been shot and killed and that those who may have helped him are being prosecuted. But there is no way to make any sense of the senselessness in this tragic event unless you stand before the memorial and realize how the four lives taken – Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and Officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42. -- really are a part of all of our lives.
They are a part of the community. They were loved by the community. They will be missed by the community. They will live forever in the hearts and the spirit and the true soul of the community. All of us are better now for their sacrifice and for their service.
No one said it better than Lakewood Police Chief Brett Farrar when he addressed the constant question: how are you doing? "This is how everyone's doing. They're here, they're working hard, they're doing their job."
"We're here to carry on, this is what we do, and this is where we are good," Farrar said, gesturing to all the Lakewood officers lined up behind him. "We will triumph in this instance."
I suggest that the city and all of its truly caring citizens adopt that quote as a new touchstone motto to begin a healing process that may take years and years to complete. There is plenty of blame as to why the suspect was on the street and not in jail, not in prison, how he got the gun. There is a fear about what could be next. There are hard decisions and hearings and public meetings ahead.
Farrar had the most-difficult tasks this week in carrying on – in the midst of a manhunt for a killer at large, while having to comfort the families of the slain officers.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I hope I never have to do it again,” he said.
As a society, as a community, I think we owe it to Farrar, to Mark Renninger, Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold, and Greg Richards to make sure that hope is fully realized. Never forget their names and what it means to give yourself to the place you live, the home you love. It begins with the candlelight vigils and the memorials and in our hearts.
May it be a candle that never goes out, a light that shines brighter day by day.
As a reporter, I went looking for a single image to capture what the community was feeling, how it was reacting, or what the essence of the story would be. It all became a blur -- a blur of colors in the flowers that were left for the officers; a blur of tears from those gathered at the memorials, a blur of news headlines and news reporters and TV cameras and passing traffic, a blur of people just like you and just like me.
When I started to download some of the photos I had taken, the one with this article seemed the most appropriate. In the middle of the blur is the simple word on the sign -- STOP -- that we see every single day, over and over, only this one was surrounded by balloons, blooms, candles, wreaths, cards, prayers.
If you'd like to read more about the officers and donate to help their families, more information is available on the Tacoma Police Guild's Web site: http://www.lpig.us/
For the best story about the suspect, read Sean Robinson today in the News Tribune: Hunt for man, answers
A memorial service for the officers has been scheduled for 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Tacoma Dome, with over 20,000 people expected to attend.
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