Police Investigate Roaring Creek Station Attack

Under the State of Emergency, investigators out west hope to capture the man they believe is responsible for the brazen attack on the Roaring Creek Police Station. On Saturday night, a lone gunman armed with a .40 caliber pistol unleashed a barrage of bullets at the police station while an officer was seated in front. As many as twenty shots were fired, but, fortunately, the officer escaped unharmed. The shooting has sparked outrage among the public as many believe it was an attack on the department. However, the Commissioner of Police Chester Williams doesn’t share the same sentiment and provided an update on the investigation.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “We are in search for that individual. As I said, we know who he is, but we have not been able to locate him. We’re hoping that pretty soon we will be able to do so. We have gotten additional information. I will not divulge that to the media at this time, surrounding that entire incident. And so as soon as the investigation is at a level where we believe we can share certain things with you, then we’ll do so. I don’t think it’s a matter of anti-police. So if you, for example, have a situation you just go shoot up a police. That may be anti-police from your perspective but not from the general public’s perspective. A person may do things for various reasons. We don’t know yet what’s the reason. We have a basic idea. But to say that it’s an anti-police sentiment, I will not go that far. But I will agree with you that it must be condemned to its greatest term. And a person who is responsible or persons responsible must be brought to justice. And we are going to make sure that we do what we can to have that happen. We are concerned. Our police station was shot up. That’s like our house. Our police officer’s life was put in danger, but I’m not going to make it more sensational for you. What the media wants is to make it more sensational to try and make the police look bad. I’m not going to play into your games. I’m not going to do that. As I said before, we condemn it to its strongest term, and all of us as a society, including the media, should condemn it to its strongest term. We cannot do things or say things that is going to make criminals feel like we are glorifying them, because that is what propels them to do the things that they do. But as a society we must make sure we have the right message, we have the right attitude to make sure that those people who are responsible are brought to justice. And we are doing just that. The fact that you saw the number of operations in Roaring Creek yesterday, the fact that we called an SOE for Roaring Creek, it shows that we are not taking this for granted and we are going harder at those persons who are responsible. We have done interviews with PC Leslie to try and verify from him if it is that he had any personal issue with anybody per se. That interview yielded that there is no one he believed would have been able to do that. So we’re looking at maybe a random act, someone who wants to create a scenario for themselves and so that’s how the investigation is looking at this time.”

Police are yet to establish a motive for the shooting, but, according to Williams, there is a possibility that it may have arisen from a conflict between officers accused of extortion and corruption.  

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “We are not ruling out nothing at this time and I am fully aware of those complaints. As a matter of fact, there are several complaints of extortion, I’m not going to hide it, where Roaring Creek Police Station is concerned. And we have addressed that issue and a number of the officers have been disciplined. Some are on interdiction, some transferred. And we’re trying to see what we can do to be able to alleviate this issue because it is one that as an administration we’re not condoning. Once you have the evidence of our police officers being involved in these type of activities, we make sure we deal with this swiftly. So- if it is that maybe what you’re trying to see is that perhaps one of the officers who have been interdicted as a result of extortion may now be going to target officers who are working there, that could be a possibility, but at this time, we are looking at it.”

Williams noted that the police have increased patrols in the village.