I was raised in a cop family in Pittsburgh. My great-grandfather was the first to serve on the force, and there is still family there to this day. It was a difficult weekend, but now I am thinking that the waiting to see if I would be attending a funeral this week was better than what I've been dealing with today.
I know that this topic has been covered here already. It is no surprise that there is at least one post on the possible motives of the shooter and how the whole situation has been covered by the press here.
In my mind it is beyond politics, right or left or in between. Regardless what anyone has said about the shooter's political belief system or slanted coverage, the bottom line is that we were left with a terribly disturbed, drunken man who laid in wait to kill police officers. The only debate I've considered seriously is whether or not his mother deserves to be charged as a co-conspirator for lying to the dispatchers at least twice when asked if weapons were involved.
The bottom line is that the shooter wanted to hurt people, was a disturbed individual who relished controlling others, and gathered what little courage he had by clinging to his weapons. He is not an icon. It isn't about any particular belief system or political philosophy. He is simply a man who was so unbalanced that it was only a matter of time before he did something like this. From the time that he was taken into custody until today, he bragged to the police that he was looking forward to having time to workout and write a book. The only thing that disturbed him was that he didn't manage to kill more officers.
Normally I love a debate. Right now the only debating I can stomach is on preventing something like this from happening again. I put up my flag today with a black ribbon since I can't fly it half-mast, and I tied a black band on the wreath on my door. If the phone rings with calls from family or friends from the Pittsburgh Police Department, I'll drop everything to be there for them. I haven't uttered the shooter's name, and refuse to type it. He is nothing. The officers who died and their families and comrades are everything.