What a horrible year it has been for mass murders of American law enforcement officers. First there was Oakland, California. Then Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Then Okaloosa County, Florida, proving that the danger isn’t limited to big cities. And now, four Lakewood, Washington police officers gunned down by a cowardly assassin as they sat in a public coffee shop doing their paperwork on their laptops.

At this writing, the suspect (oh, excuse me, the “person of interest”) remains at large. He is believed to have been wounded by the one officer who was able to fight back before he collapsed, dying from the injuries inflicted upon him from ambush.

Fingers of blame point everywhere. At then-Governor Mike Huckabee, a politician liked by many who read this, who long ago commuted the suspect’s sentence. At a flawed System that allowed this man to be free on bail after being arrested for the rape of a child and assault on police. And for every pointing finger, there are more unanswered questions.

The quadruple ambush murder comes on a Thanksgiving weekend less than a month after the Halloween ambush murder of a Seattle police officer. Cops everywhere are grieving. Each of the slain Guardians left a widow or widower. Each left children, a total of nine between them. Donations to the widowed and orphaned survivors may be sent to the Lakewood Police Independent Guild Benevolent Fund, PO Box 99579, Lakewood, WA 98499.

There will be an end to this story, very likely involving more gunfire. Oakland SWAT killed the cop-killer there. The Pittsburgh ambusher was wounded, couldn’t bear the pain, and surrendered. The Okaloosa County killer, torn apart by police bullets in a second encounter, put his gun to his head and blew his brains out. I suspect a similar fate awaits the cowardly murderer in this case.

There are questions. There are even lessons. What we seem to be short of is answers.

1 COMMENT

  1. It is sad to see another “what if” scenario played out before us. The gun control group will again jump on the “what if all handguns were outlawed” bandwagon (or banned-wagon), and there are those of us who will wonder “what if all citizens in the coffee shop had been carrying concealed”. However, that brings to mind another thought…what if the officers had seen a legal CCW holder drawing to defend them before they saw the perp? Would a highly developed sense of tactical awareness have helped in that situation, or would it have distracted the officers even more? Unfortunately, as you pointed out, there are more questions than answers right now. My thoughts and prayers are with the officers’ families.

  2. What a tragedy, I can’t express the respect, admiration and even love I have for the brave men and women who daily leave the comfort of their homes to face the streets and uphold the rule of law. Our nation should mourn the loss of each.

  3. Fallen Brothers. Every officer must remember when they leave home or the station that uniform is a big bullseye. Stay alert out there because there are others out there planning the same. Stay Alert and Safe!!

  4. Mtn CPA you are wrong. Don’t expect the antigun lobby or liberal politicians to play up any incident in which a BLACK murderer kills anyone – let alone kills a police officer.
    That’s just way too politically-incorrect an image – and thus outside the liberal template. When three BLACK teenagers here about 1998 raped and strangled to death a white girl after beating her in the head with a board – no guns involved – it got nil “mainstream” media coverage outside this state. Even though that was the same year the “mainstream” media was obsessed with “kids killing kids” stories in which guns were involved, they wouldn’t touch one that was politically-incorrect racially.

  6. I seem to recall a case back around 2000 where then-Governor George Bush of Texas was being asked to “Commute” a Death Sentence for a young woman on Death Row. As I remember it, the State of Texas had, by statute, “greatly reduced” the power of the Governor to Commute a Death Sentence. I think the Governor was only allowed to commute one death sentence per term.

    That wouldn’t have helped in this case because the “perpetrator” was granted “clemancy” by the Governor of another state but if the individual states begin to review their Parole Guidelines, they could reduce many of these cases where “repeat offenders” with long criminal histories re-offend.

    And no, I don’t care if they “stack ’em up like cordwood”…

  7. Mas,

    You have a lot more data points than I do. What do you think people should take from incidents like these? Part of me wants to just write it off as, “bad people doing bad things,” but then another part of me says that’s too simple an answer, and such an extreme act must be worthy of deeper analysis… an analysis that I feel woefully under-qualified to make, unfortunately.

    I realize this is a big and open-ended question, and I’m not sure what might be said in an answer, especially in a relatively short blog comment, but I’d be interested to hear whatever you felt like saying.

  8. I hope you’re right, Matt, but not for the reason you give. I hope Mtn CPA is wrong in assuming that the gun grabbers will seize on this as a cause celebre. I hope it’s treated as I hope it is: cop-hating criminal, probably crazed by drugs, acting out his sick fantasy. Period.

    What bothered me when the news first hit was the bizarre ring of familiarity, i.e. Night Owl coffee shop, Rollo Tomasi, something more here than it seems. This still bothers me.

  9. Has anyone else but me noted that both the Seattle cop killer and the Oakland cop killer had 3 things in common: 1) Both killed 4 cops, 2) Both were Black & 3)Both had been charged with child rape/molestation before their sprees…
    Things that make you go “Hmmm”…..
    (P.S.: I disagree with Matt here, since the Anti-gun Nuts came out of the woodwork with the Oakland case because the firearm was a so-called quote-assault weapon-unquote, originally claimed to be an “AK-47” but actually was a Simonov/SKS carbine, so the lies were thick and heavy there. The race angle is NOT always the deciding factor, so lighten up on it, racism still exists, the KKK have not disbanded, nor have the skinhead types either. Criminals are criminals, fanatics are fanatics, no matter the shade!).

  10. Joshua, it is said that the price of freedom is constant vigilance.

    That may also be the price of survival.

    Sadly,
    Mas

  12. Joshua, it is said that the price of freedom is constant vigilance.

    That may also be the price of survival.

    Hell yes, and a sad thing it is, but there will always be “wolves” out there I suppose. I’m a past victim of a violent crime, which was fully the result of my own failure to pay even the slightest attention to my own safety. I came through it unharmed, due only to the good graces of my assailant. Since then, I’ve tried to drill myself to pay attention to what’s around me when I’m out in public, AT ALL TIMES. But we all drop out of condition yellow sometimes, or sometimes the threat develops fast enough that condition yellow is insufficient. If a person is determined to kill and has physical access, I’m not sure there’s much that can be done to stop him or her.

    At least twice in my life since my mugging, I’ve spotted something “off” that later turned out to have been a crime about to happen to me. My awareness prevented both of those attacks, and probably at least a few others which I never noticed. In fact, the only time since the mugging that I’ve been snuck up on was in a Target store, by a police officer who believed that the 3″ hunting knife on my belt was longer than allowed by city ordinance. He had a cuff on my wrist before I even knew he was there. I kicked myself for weeks for not paying attention, all the while being thankful that I hadn’t used force to defend myself before I knew who was grabbing me by surprise from behind. Ironically, I was legally carrying my pistol at the time, which the officer did not mind at all. In fact, after going through my pockets in the back room of the store, he actually took the gun into the other room with the store manager and, I KID YOU NOT, dry-fired it a few times. I wonder what his backstop was.

    For the record, the knife would have been illegal IF it had been an auto-opener, but since it was a fixed-blade, it was NOT illegal. The officer’s understanding of the ordinance was… incomplete. I still got a ride to the detention center and about six hours in the company of the fine drunks and disorderlies of Atlanta before I was bailed out. All charges were later dropped and the arrest was expunged. Just wouldn’t want you thinking an LFI graduate was out there being anything but a fine, upstanding citizen.

  13. snake9 says the KKK has not disbanded.Neither has the NAACP shut up with their constant whining about every little thing.They are the biggest crybabies out there. And let’s not forget ACORN, who now has Roseanne Barr doing their whining for them.

  14. Mas Said:

    “What a horrible year it has been for mass murders of American law enforcement officers.”

    It certainly seems that way, but is there any data that can be used in an argument on this? Statistics would be helpful if possible.

  15. “Matt…well, here you go, it begins with an LA Times Editorial piece: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cops1-2009dec01,0,4102431.story”

    That’s in the LOS ANGELES TIMES – one of the most-liberal papers in America. Here in North Carolina, this story isn’t even “news” any more in the papers; much more space given to Tiger Woods.
    Wake up; how this played out – or didn’t – was governed by the politically-incorrect in the extreme image of a black male killing a police officer (or anyone else). The stories that the antigun lobby loves are the abnormal politically-correct ones that are as rare as Powerball wins: white male without prior rap sheet “goes postal.”

  16. How this will really play out in the end, we may never know. Perhaps now, the antigun lobby is quietly using this incident as one more statistic to persuade legislators at any level to start yet another antigun piece of legislation or at least vote for one already in the works. They don’t need to mention race…they just need to mention that gun X killed Y number of innocent people, and something should be done about it. They can hide the relevant information in that statistic, squeeze out just enough truth to further their cause and remain politically correct in the process.

  17. Although I don’t wish death on anyone, scumbags such as this one who murdered 4 officers, needed to meet his maker. I notice the gunshot to the dirtballs abdomin, seems this is the wound he suffered from one of the officers he gunned down in cold blood. If you look closely, it appears that he has an entry wound above his eye and possibly one in his right cheek…..those would be “optimum hits”. God Bless our law enforcement officers