From the Round Table: Kirkwood shooting spotlights security needs at local council meetings

There isn’t a municipality anywhere that wasn’t shocked by the shooting rampage a fortnight ago just a few hours’ drive from here in peaceful little old Kirkwood, Mo. It’s difficult to imagine the violence that left six people dead and to wonder whether gunfire could happen during our city council proceedings at 701 E. Broadway—especially knowing that TV cameras would be present to record all the graphic horror.

All the press accounts tell us the nowdeceased perpetrator started out in life as a pretty decent fellow, who finally broke and went violent because of all the troubles he was having with Kirkwood city officials. It was a long-running battle. Local officials maintain we have nothing comparable here, although privately they’ll mention a situation or two in the past when the shouting and the arguing got pretty heated.

Naturally, any city or county would expect compliance with its ordinances and regulations. The regulatory complexity on both levels has increased over the years, and so has the number of functionaries most residents have occasion to have contact with. The Kirkwood shooter was clearly a disturbed man who chafed at regulation. Still, one wonders whether skillful negotiation could have helped find middle ground in his contentious, ongoing conflict with city officials and whether compromise could have headed off the violent confrontation that ended so tragically. Let’s hope an analysis of the Kirkwood case will provide a warning and some direction for conflict avoidance here in Columbia.

Of course something this horrific could happen here. City officials for now say they don’t want to take any Draconian security steps at the entrance to the council chambers. That would ultimately include the installation of a metal detector, a device that’s virtually de rigueur at the entrance of any courtroom in the land.

A less radical step would be the reformation of attitudes and the way respective governments work vis-à-vis those who have dealings with its respective councils and agencies. This means minimizing any possible friction points between those who regulate and govern and the hoi polloi that elect and support them.

Our quality of life here is widely celebrated. Survey after survey underscores the generally high approval rating governments and their agencies achieve in the way they interact with us. Still there is unrest, and the level discomfiture with area governments has accelerated somewhat over the past year. Some residents believe Columbia is turning into a “nanny state” because of the smoking ordinance, the imminent installation of traffic light cameras at a quartet of busy intersections and other policies that they don’t find favor with. On the county level, the scrapes go from public works issues to zoning and land uses.

Some critics will contend there are accelerating levels of friction on other levels. Less visible, though periodically contentious, are the encounters between those who govern and regulate and the crowd of supplicants who come calling upon some local board, agency, department or other government body. City and county public works departments are the most besieged, and it’s at this level that, perhaps, the seeds of some future horrific act could in fact be planted.

Perhaps it’s time we appoint someone to arbitrate matters between area residents and local government bodies. That could be the way to get a handle on a contentious situation before it escalates into something like the Kirkwood tragedy. That must never happen here.