Mark Renninger, Tina Griswold, Ronald Owens, Greg Richards, Kent Mundell and Timothy Brenton.
In the span of two months late last year, the six Puget Sound-area police officers were gunned down while on duty.
The deaths of the four Lakewood, Wash., police officers, a Pierce County sheriff's deputy and a Seattle police officer shocked their colleagues and the communities they protected, and reminded everyone of the daily dangers of police work.
But they did not alter the way law enforcement goes about its business.
The News Tribune has found that local police agencies, after examining the killings, did little to change their policies or procedures, nor did they respond with a backlash of violence of their own.
Officers still gather at coffee shops and restaurants to chat, catch up with reports and grab something to eat — exactly what the Lakewood officers were doing when ambushed.
"You can't have a policy governing every time you need to be attentive," Lakewood Assistant Police Chief Mike Zaro said. "We are always supposed to be aware of our surroundings no matter what we are doing and where we are at."
Officers still train the same way to respond to violence directed at them. People still are applying to become cops.
And, despite some assertions to the contrary, use of force among Puget Sound-area officers has not spiked in the year since the string of fatal shootings.
An analysis by The News Tribune showed that police have been exercising force at about the same rate as before the deaths of Renninger, Griswold, Owens, Richards, Mundell and Brenton.
In some cases, use of force by police has decreased over the past year.
No Lakewood officers have been involved in a shooting since the Nov. 29, 2009, deaths of their colleagues.
"It's not the officer who is generally in control of the incident that necessitates the use of force," Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste said. "You don't have an officer who walks up to someone and says, 'I am going to use force.'"
Still, state lawmakers were looking into use of deadly force by officers throughout Washington, and a statewide police and sheriff's association hopes to receive federal money to study the issue further.
Read more of this story at TheNewsTribune.com
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