In the hours following Monday's memorial for two fallen Miami-Dade police officers, questions linger that may be unanswerable.
Why would anyone pull a trigger and kill another human? What kind of a person would kill a police officer? Are there racial or socio-economic issues at play?
Like so many things, it depends who you ask.
A handful of black leaders in South Florida are saying race is an undercurrent that fuels the tension and distrust that may have lead to the deadly shootings.
But several law enforcement experts say it's so much more complex. Death causes anger and anger caused these deaths of Miami-Dade officers Amanda Haworth and Roger Castillo.
In a recent span of just 24 hours, 11 police officers around the country were shot, including two dead and one wounded in St. Petersburg, Florida. In Washington State, two more were wounded. Detroit, four more. In Indianapolis, a gunman shot an officer multiple times, critically wounding him.
And all this in the shadow of the Tucson massacre.
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Society collectively asks, "What's going on here?"
FIU professor Eugenio Rothe studies the criminal mind and says we all yearn for simple answers.
"Whenever there's a tragedy of this magnitude, there's a propensity to look for a pattern that fits all the cases," Rothe said. "In reality, the human mind is very complex and each individual responds to very personal, deep motivations."
Several black leaders at an NAACP meeting Monday night, and others have previously said that racism may not have pulled the trigger in some of these cases. But it fuels the schism between police and black youth, and even distorts how we view gunman Johnny Simms, who was killed in the shootout with Castillo and Haworth. Is he “pure evil” or merely a product of his world?
"The bottom line here is,” said Miami City Commissioner Richard Dunn, “and I'm just going to say it...Stereotype."
The Miami-Dade Police Director James Loftus, who called Simms 'pure evil,' tried to redirect the debate during Monday's tearful memorial at the American Airlines Arena. "If you think this is about skin color or ethnicity,” he said, “you're in the wrong place."
Other law enforcement experts said the shooting spree nationwide is influenced by several things: A criminal mind unafraid of police. A down economy and joblessness. Budget cuts let criminals go free and cuts the number of cops on the street.
It's all of that, they say.
And yet for the families of fallen officers, it just doesn't matter.
