Mass shootings create wariness
Some concerned about personal safety
Walking into a Walmart in Memphis on Tuesday, 32-year-old Afghanistan immigrant Hikmat Wardak said the mass shootings over the weekend didn't scare him.
What scares him is that America is starting to feel more like his home country.
“There were explosions every day in
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my country,” Wardak said, his 3-yearold son holding his hand and his 6-yearold daughter standing close by. “But I don't like what I see in this country: The need for more peace.”
“The places in America like this,” he
Ryan Poe and Samuel Hardiman
said, rattling off a list of popular destinations like stores, festivals and worship places, “must be more secure.”
But more people are looking over their shoulders in public after two men with assault-type weapons separately killed at least 31 people and wounded dozens more at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and at an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio. Also, a suspended Southaven, Mississippi, Walmart employee was arrested last week after he allegedly shot and killed two coworkers and wounded an officer just south of Memphis.
The death toll from mass shootings since the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, is now at 2,193, according to Vox.com.
At a Walmart in Nashville’s Berry Hill area, Taura Cheatham said she was scared to bring her two children into the store after their first day of school.
“I’m a little nervous,” she said. “I hope to be in and out in a few minutes because it’s not safe anymore at all. I don’t like to go in public places anymore.”
At the same Walmart, Lateiasha Link said the mass shootings are made more traumatic for her after the fatal shooting of her 16-year-old nephew last year.
“Coming to a Walmart after the shooting is very frightening,” she said. “It makes you try to be aware of your surroundings even though you have no idea what anyone looks like anymore, because a serial killer doesn’t look like a serial killer. I try not to come out after dark. It’s very sad.”
She added: “Somebody needs to get a grip on America, fast. This isn’t life anymore.”
The fear is also real in Memphis, where Latino Memphis executive director Mauricio Calvo said his office received a call Monday morning from a man who told an employee that Hispanics “deserved what happened” in El Paso. The shooter, who is in custody, is thought to have written a racist, antiimmigrant, white nationalist manifesto.
Calvo, who is running for a Memphis City Council seat this October, added that he’ll be keeping his kids closer to him in stores and other crowded areas from now on.
“It’s scary not only as a Latino but as a human being,” Calvo said of the shootings.
The mass shootings highlight a deeper-rooted problem in the country for Memphis Walmart shopper Donna Sammons. Instead of treating people with respect, as having value apart from their circumstances, many people choose to pick apart and bully others, she said — including her 10-year-old daughter, who was standing next to her.
“We need to look at what’s been going on in society,” she said. “I think we — as a society — need to say, ‘It’s OK to be different,’” she said.
In Memphis, Police Director Michael Rallings rushed to reassure citizens Saturday that officers would step up patrols of area Walmarts and other shopping areas.
“We want our citizens and visitors to be able to come, shop, enjoy the city and prepare for school without any threats of violence or any incidents that would cause one to be alarmed,” Rallings said during the news conference.
Police didn’t respond to questions about whether Beale Street’s security would be beefed up further. Jennifer Oswalt, chief executive for the street’s manager, the Downtown Memphis Commission, said no additional security measures are planned. On any given weekend night, dozens of law enforcement officers patrol the area as mobile Skywatch police towers placed in the middle of the street keep an eye on the activities.
“We are not (doing anything differently) but we feel that we are doing all that we can,” Oswalt said of her organization. “We are not the police.”
On Nashville’s Lower Broadway, the heart of the booming tourist district, bar owners have ramped up security in the past year, particularly after a shooting in late 2018 at a country western-style bar in Thousand Oaks, California, that killed 13 people. Bar owners poured money into security and active-shooter training for employees.
“We all feel like we are doing everything humanly possible to be alert and vigilant. We just know we can never let our guard down for one second,” Brenda Sanderson, the owner of several Lower Broadway honky-tonks, said in an emailed statement.
Mass shootings — and especially the shooting that killed 58 at an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas in 2017, the deadliest mass shooting to date — have also changed the festival business. Jim Holt, chief executive of the month-long Memphis in May International Festival, said the festival will again tighten security next year.
Although he wouldn’t talk security specifics, Holt said security is more top of mind now for the festival’s organizers and its roughly 100,000 attendees.
“Anytime you have a large-scale group of people, that can potential be a target,” he said.
Meanwhile, Tamara Cook, executive director of the Cooper Young Business Association in Memphis, said the Cooper-young Festival on Sept. 14 has “so many layers of security it’s ridiculous.” Also, just outside of Memphis, Germantown Festival Coordinator Melba Fristick said security is “maxed out” at the Sept. 7-8 festival — and has been for years.
People still go but they’re much more wary, Fristick said. The oft-repeated phrase, “See something, say something,” has become almost a “household word,” she added.
“It’s just common sense, now. You have to be friendly but you always have to remain alert,” she said.
USA TODAY Network-tennessee reporters Sam Hardiman of The Commercial Appeal, and Brooklyn Dance and Lizzy Alfs of The Tennessean contributed to this story.
Reach Ryan Poe at poe@commercialappeal.com and on Twitter @ryanpoe.
Mass shootings — and especially the shooting that killed 58 at an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas in 2017 — have also changed the festival business. Jim Holt, chief executive of the month-long Memphis in May International Festival, said the festival will again tighten security next year.