
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 24, 1993                   TAG: 9305220207
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JUNE ARNEY LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHEN A TROOPER DIES, `IT'S LIKE LOSING A BROTHER'

Anthony Roberts was putting hospital corners on his bed at the State Police Academy when he heard the news that a state trooper had been killed in Northern Virginia.

"A knot kind of forms in your stomach," said the 23-year-old from Henry County. "It really makes you think."

It was the 14th week of the 26-week course when Virginia's class of new troopers learned that one of their own was dead.

During the day, the story unfolded of how Trooper Jose Cavazos had been shot five times by two men in a stolen car on Interstate 95 near Potomac Mills Mall.

"It's like losing a brother or a stepbrother," said Trooper Curtis Hardison, a former sheriff's deputy from Isle of Wight County. "It just makes you wonder, could it have been you?"

He and his classmates know they'll spend much of their time patrolling alone in a world where nearly everyone seems to carry a gun.

For them, Cavazos' Feb. 24 killing carried an especially urgent warning.

"As a class, we started putting a lot more emphasis on officer survival and defensive tactics," said William Towles, 27, of Virginia Beach. "We started looking at . . . outlines long before the classes came up. This [trooper] class is definitely taking it seriously. It brings it home."

On May 12, Cavazos' portrait will join those of fellow troopers killed in the line of duty. It will be placed on perpetual display in the Academy's Woodson Memorial Gallery - an alluring yet frightening place.

Perhaps more troubling than the portraits are the spaces where the next portrait could go.

"You once a year expect that someone will be run over, hit by a car or shot," said trooper Gilbert Shomette, from Chesterfield, who is a firearms instructor. "It hits you."

It's the issue two FBI agents had in mind when they conducted a three-year study, asking 50 people who had killed police officers from 1975 to 1985 what their victims did wrong. The agents videotaped the interviews for use in police training.

The agents applied techniques the FBI has long used to profile criminal activity to describe the fatal behavior of victim officers. The idea is to make sure that when officers look in the mirror they don't see the next victim.

The FBI findings, published recently in a 60-page summary called "Killed in the Line of Duty," showed that the slain officers often were good-natured and conservative with the use of force. They tended to rely on their ability to "read" situations and didn't always wait for a backup.

The death of a peer forces every trooper and every police officer to acknowledge the danger of the street and confront their fears.

"You see your own mortality," said Sgt. Dane Wyatt, a trooper from Waverly. "The good thing - if there is a good thing to come out of it - is that it causes you to be more cautious. There's no such thing as a routine traffic stop, but if you've done several thousand and had no life-threatening situations, you tend to think it's going to go OK. . . . It brings you back to reality, so when you do make that next stop, you'll keep it in mind."

by CNB