Tampabay: TPD struggles with another loss

TPD struggles with another loss

By ANGELA MOORE

TAMPA -- The downtown lunch crowd rushed by Friday afternoon, oblivious to the flags flying at half-staff and the plainclothes officers gathered outside Tampa police headquarters.

The officers whispered, smoked and cried quietly. They felt what the lunch crowd couldn't. One of their own had been shot dead, the third to die by a criminal's bullet in three years.

A little after 1 p.m., a woman with tears streaming beneath her sunglasses stood before the black granite memorial to the department's fallen. She placed a lavender rose at the base of the monument, on the side where Officer Lois Marrero's name will be carved. She stood back, made the sign of the cross and took a deep breath. Her frustrations came pouring out.

Her name was Karen O'Hair. She is a member of Friends of TPD, an organization that collects donations to buy extra safety equipment for police officers.

"We try to save their lives," O'Hair said in a shaky voice. "We give them vests to keep them safe and then they get shot in the neck. . . . No matter how much we give them, we can't stop a bullet to the neck. I don't know what else we can do."

As Tampa police officers know, equipment like bulletproof vests and metal-detecting wands can only do so much. The rest is up to fate.

"I've been here 27 years," said Officer Craig Harridge. "And I've buried a lot of my friends in that time. It's the toughest part of the job. . . . They all hurt. Every single one of them hurts just as bad as this one."

Just over three years ago, Tampa police lost two detectives in one day. Randy Bell and Ricky Childers were shot by Hank Earl Carr, a suspect already in custody. For family members of the two detectives, Friday's shooting was jarring.

Loujean Brittain was Randy Bell's ex-wife. Her 19-year-old son, Dustin, is a criminology major at the University of South Florida who wants to be a police officer.

"When I first heard about this shooting and all those feelings came back, I thought to myself for a split second, "Dustin can't do this,' " Brittain said. "But Randy could've been diagnosed with cancer and died a long, lingering death. Instead, he died doing a job that he did exceptionally well and that brought him immense peace."

According to those who knew her, Marrero, a 19-year veteran, also died doing a job she loved.

Former City Council member Scott Paine placed a small basket of purple flowers at the police memorial about 6 p.m. Paine met Marrero through his work on the council when she was one of the officers helping clean up Ybor City. Marrero, he said, was "one of those people that stick out in your mind."

As the first woman to die in the line of duty at TPD, Marrero will also have a place in history.

"She ends up with a place in history no one wanted her to have," Paine said. "But she would say she was an officer and she was just doing her job."

Capt. Jane Castor, one of the highest-ranking women at TPD, said that those who emphasize Marrero's gender are missing the point.

"I think that every female that is a police officer wants to be known as a police officer, not as a female police officer," Castor said.

"Every police officer feels the pain, feels the same devastation, when another officer is killed," Castor said. Being a woman does not make that pain any more or less acute, she said.

The Rev. Beverly Lane, a TPD chaplain, said she would be available to any officers who needed her in the coming days and weeks.

"Chaplains have to be strong, too," Lane said. Lane remembered Marrero as a small woman with a firm handshake who used to wave and say, "Keep praying, Chap!" whenever they met.

"Lois did not lose her life in vain," Lane said. "She was a brave woman. There is a price, and she paid it just as Christ paid the price."

Outside police headquarters, Maj. Scott Cunningham wore his long-sleeved black dress uniform to show his respect for Marrero.

"Unfortunately, this situation is too familiar for us. . . . That memorial over there has too many names on it," he said. "When Lois' name is added, it will be a very small reminder of an extraordinary life."