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Letters to the Editor: It Was a ‘Textbook’ Response to an Active Shooter!

I’ve taught trauma management for over fifty years, often working with victims of an active shooting.

After Timothy McVey’s hate for Bill Clinton led him to bomb the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, I traveled the country with Florence Rogers, the sole survivor in the Federal Credit Union on the fourth floor, teaching Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED), a course on how to lock-down victims in “defendable zones” and extricate them from the building during an active shooting. 

After the 9-11-01 bombing of the World Trade Center, I traveled the country with NYPD’s Tony Conti and FBI Agent Neil Purtel working with law enforcement agencies and first responders to ensure a “united” command would be in place before our next terrorist attack, rooted in the Incident Command System (ICS).

What we taught was not rocket science. We taught communities to surround victims with “nonjudgmental” listeners and allowed them to vent. To help victims regain their sense of being in control, we brought in government officials and religious leaders to “cap” their trauma and bring “closure” to their life-threatening experience. We warned those who criticize anyone during a crisis seriously jeopardize the victim’s ability to recover, slow the recovery process, deepen the victim’s scars, and forever embed guilt, fear, anger and hate in their community.

It’s normal to be angry at those who shoot up our schools and threaten our soft targets. It’s normal to be angry at God for allowing a natural disaster. It’s also normal to be angry, knowing the only guaranteed way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy close enough to takeout the shooter. But the unbridled anger of the misguided internet junkies

We all know what anger and hate can do to a normally God fearing Christian country. Let’s just stop hating those with whom we disagree, before it triggers another killing rampage. And that my fellow Americans, you can take to the Democrat’ convention. 

God bless America, and God bless Donald Trump!

Richard Woldt 

Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin