Daily danger
I was two blocks away when I heard the gunshots.
I excused myself from my friends and walked to my car to listen to the police scanner. I didn’t reach the car before I knew it was bad. I could hear police sirens coming from every direction.
On March 25, 1998, Omak police officer Mike Marshall was shot dead and officer Don Eddy was injured. Responding to a domestic disturbance, the officers asked Juan Duarte Gonzalez to take his hands out of his pockets. He pulled out a pistol and shot Marshall in the head. Eddy returned fire, hitting Gonzalez. When Eddy went to handcuff the shooter, Gonzalez pulled a second pistol, shooting Eddy in the leg and leaving a bullet in the officer’s hip.
I knew both officers and had written stories about them for eight years before they were shot.
People often complain about police, from the one who wrote them a ticket to the one who arrested a friend. In my time covering the police, I had never heard of a complaint about Marshall. The silver-haired officer was a father of two children and married. His smile was always genuine and he had a way to convey respect when talking with people, even the people he pulled over and arrested.
I witnessed and recorded the grief of his family, fellow officers and the community. I was close to the department after seeing them nearly daily for eight years.
No one could have guessed the warm day in March would end with Marshall’s death in an alley behind the Stampede Motel.
No one could have guessed on Nov. 29, Lakewood police officers Sgt. Mark Renninger, Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold and Gregory Richards were going to die in the Forza Coffee shop in Parkland.
Police officers do not wake up, prepare for work, thinking they are going to die. But they know it is a possibility. They face danger every day and find the courage to return the next day and the day after.
When Marshall died, one officer had trouble with the potential of never returning home and resigned.
Police work in a dangerous environment. When someone is shooting a gun at people, police go toward the danger. They interject themselves in fights, endanger their lives chasing suspects in cars and on foot. They are aware they are targets for criminals.
They faced danger on behalf of people who can often seem constantly angry with them for issuing speeding tickets or not immediately capturing a criminal or for not being right where they were needed at a specific time.
They see bad people doing terrible things to good people. They see good people at their worst, such as when they make tragic mistakes of judgment.
When officers die in the line of duty, it serves as a reminder of what law enforcement faces daily. The threat of danger becomes real, tangible. It is tragic and frightening.
They accept the dangers of their job and face them willingly. They do it for us.
With the tragic reminder of four Lakewood officers’ deaths, please take time to thank our Columbia Basin law enforcement for what they do. Later, when the memories of the officers’ deaths are distant, try to remember how any emergency service provider, in any city, town or county, could face the same sacrifice on our behalf.
— Bill Stevenson, managing editor