TIME FOR MOURNING

Less than a week after the tragedy, it is still the time to mourn the four
young RCMP officers murdered in the ambush near Mayerthorpe, Alta.

Their names and young ages deserve mention here again: Const. Anthony
Fitzgerald Orion Gordon, 28; Const. Lionide Nicholas Johnston, 34; Const.
Brock Warren Myrol, 29; and Const. Peter Christopher Schiemann, 25. Most
Canadians by now are familiar with their stories - that, for example,
Const. Myrol had only been on the force 17 days and had announced his
wedding engagement on Valentine's Day.

It's part of mourning, of course, to ponder what might have been done
differently to spare their lives - to wish things had been done
differently; to cast about for answers.

In our grief, we often couch this wishful thinking in terms of striving to
ensure that such horror doesn't happen again. What our hearts really want,
though, is to turn back the clock and with the clarity of hindsight have
everyone know exactly what to do to prevent this specific tragedy.

In a tragedy of these proportions, the search for answers cuts a wide swath
as reporters covering the story seek new angles. Nobody wants to accept
that an enraged psychopath, determined to kill police officers, would be
cunning and cold-blooded enough to do that.

Nobody wants to accept that such a deranged individual as Jim Roszko would
snap with such horrifying fury. Similarly, 15 years ago, nobody was
prepared to accept that a deranged, heavily armed Marc Lepine would kill 14
female engineering students in Montreal just because he was deranged.

Only after Lepine and Roszko committed their murderous rampages did those
who know them say in hindsight that they weren't surprised. Even so, we
weren't prepared to let Lepine or Roszko be solely responsible for their
heinous crimes. We blamed sexist jokes and the easy availability of
automatic weapons for Lepine's dirty work. That resulted in the infamous
gun-registry boondoggle, which ironically is receiving some of the blame
for Roszko's rampage. So are Canada's liberal attitudes toward marijuana -
because investigators found 20 mature pot plants on Roszko's property.

It has since been revealed that police came to Roszko's farm initially
because he scared off a bailiff trying to seize a pickup truck. Police
subsequently found a chop shop on his place. He had diversified criminal
interests.

Aside from a sister and a long-ago teacher, most people the media
interviewed about Roszko described him as an anti-social, gun-loving,
authority-hating scoundrel. How he got that way makes for interesting
speculation. That he was that way made him dangerous.

Equally incorrigible people live in every community. We can't tell which
ones are going to blow up. The police can't either. The death last summer
of Majencio Camaso, a mentally ill man who had gone off his medication,
underscores that harsh reality.

Now is the time to mourn the deaths of those young police officers. We must
leave it for later to determine what laws and policies are lacking. But we
can't do that until we're prepared to accept the harrowing prospect that
sometimes little or nothing can be done to stop a cunning and determined killer.