{"id":2149,"date":"2012-07-23T11:08:08","date_gmt":"2012-07-23T15:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/?p=2149"},"modified":"2012-07-23T12:47:17","modified_gmt":"2012-07-23T16:47:17","slug":"tragedies-rarely-lead-to-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/?p=2149","title":{"rendered":"Tragedies Rarely Lead to Closure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I do not consider myself an overly philosophical kind of guy.\u00a0 But there is a nagging, almost rhetorical, question which I have heard many times at the scene of a tragedy and that is, \u201cWhy?\u201d\u00a0 I just read another headline in the mainstream media about the mass murder in Colorado that said something like, \u201cAurora Searches for Answers While Community Grieves.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the scene of a homicide, especially ones involving extreme violence, it is not uncommon to hear distraught victims, loved-ones, or witnesses ask for closure to make sense of something senseless.\u00a0 Whether in consoling these individuals or in attempting to extract necessary information, their fixations can be both saddening and challenging to a law enforcement officer.<\/p>\n

Human nature thrives on explanation.\u00a0 This yearning for knowledge is directly responsible for the practices of Religion and Science.\u00a0 Both pursuits exist to satisfy our need for a structural context to the events we experience in our lives.\u00a0 Explanation gives us comfort.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the impetus for some events exists solely in the twisted minds of those responsible.\u00a0 The gunman in Aurora is the lone architect for what is labeled a national tragedy.\u00a0 The rationale for what he did may never be told, nor should his articulation of any reason for the incident ever truly be trusted.<\/p>\n

I guess, over the years, I have developed a frustration with the question of Why?\u00a0 Not that people should not find solace in an answer, but in that the question itself has placed them in an emotional situation from which there is rarely an external answer.<\/p>\n

Regrettably, the question of Why? must be satisfied internally by the victims and\/or families themselves.\u00a0 Some individuals find strength in their religious beliefs.\u00a0 Others may struggle to put the horrible puzzle together in a way that allows them to move on.\u00a0 Saddest to me are the people who become forever tortured by a lack of closure.<\/p>\n

As law enforcement officers, it is not for us to interact with the grieving and offer answers to Why?\u00a0 I am of the opinion that officers should neither foist religious platitudes, nor offer secular observations as to Why?\u00a0 We may search for the motive of a crime, but it is only for criminal justice purposes, not societal ones.<\/p>\n

As a detective, I once had to keep a suspect, who had just murdered a young woman, on the phone while other officers feverishly attempted to locate him several jurisdictions away.\u00a0 During our agonizingly long conversation, the suspect gave me all sorts of reasons for what he had done.\u00a0 All of them were bullshit, designed to minimize his crime and cloud his involvement.\u00a0 I was at least gratified when I heard him being arrested on the other end of the connection.<\/p>\n

My limited world view has exposed me to events that make me angry for the selfish nature of their violence.\u00a0 I find no worth in the suspects as citizens or as human beings.\u00a0 I sympathize with those who want to know Why?, but it is a question to which I have largely turned my back.<\/p>\n

Randall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I do not consider myself an overly philosophical kind of guy.\u00a0 But there is a nagging, almost rhetorical, question which I have heard many times at the scene of a tragedy and that is, \u201cWhy?\u201d\u00a0 I just read another headline in the mainstream media about the mass murder in Colorado that said something like, \u201cAurora Searches for Answers While Community Grieves.\u201d At the scene of a homicide, especially ones involving extreme violence, it is not uncommon to hear distraught victims, loved-ones, or witnesses ask for closure to make sense of something senseless.\u00a0 Whether in consoling these individuals or in attempting to extract necessary information, their fixations can be both saddening … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[407,349],"tags":[419,420,416,418,417],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","tag-closure","tag-mass-murder","tag-mass-shootings","tag-senseless-violence","tag-tragic-shooting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28xkp-yF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2160,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions\/2160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}