As a crime blogger, I know I should cover the shooting that happened yesterday– Valentine’s Day– at Northern Illinois University. I know it’s news, I know it’s crime, I know it’s worth talking about. I just don’t know how to talk about it.
 
Everyone else already is giving their opinions, so that gets me off the hook. Right? Probably not.
 
I have no explanations for you readers. No ideas. No theories. The Tribune is saying that Stephen P. Kazmierczak– the former NIU grad student responsible for the shooting– went off his medication two weeks ago and became “erratic.”
 
This doesn’t seem like an explanation to me. The man took four guns into a lecture hall and opened fire. What kind of medication was this? Why was this man even around people?
 
I don’t know why occurrences like this still shock us. The same thing happened in Tinley Park, and last year at Virginia Tech. It’s been happening for eons, and yet our stomachs still drop, our throats still constrict and our knees still buckle in the presence of… What? Evil? Is that what it is? Was this man evil?
 
Or is this world just sick?
 
I don’t know. We’d all like to think that we’re safe in our ivory tower of education– and then people like Kazmierczak burst in, guns blazing, and shatter the glass of our Utopia.
 
He took his life on stage, and he hasn’t left since. His story will go down in the dramatic realm of American crime. There will be whispers in the halls and sickos looking for bloodstains.
 
And there will be writers like me, trying to make sense of everything with flimsy words.

Something is a-brewing over at the CPD. The Tribune’s Web site merely announces:
 
Chicago Police Department Supt. Jodi Weis will announce major staff changes at a news conference at police headquarters this morning.
 
What could these major changes be? Casual Fridays? Daily mandatory cardio classes to make up for all those stereotypical donuts? Or something much more…well… major. Stay tuned.