Law enforcement appears concerned that a former reporter’s alleged double murder of his two former colleagues, which he apparently filmed and posted online, will trigger copy cats seeking notoriety of a similar nature.
“From a law enforcement perspective. The least number of times that media mentions this guys name it reduces the number of copycat situations. A lot of these people do these types of shootings for the notoriety,“ Chuck Canterbury, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, told The Daily Caller.
WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were allegedly gunned down Wednesday in Roanoke by Vester Lee Flanagan, a disgruntled former reporter at the news station who was recently fired from his position. The entire event happened while Parker was doing a live broadcast. Flanagan died of a self-inflicted gun-shot wound shortly after the incident.
Flannagan himself was a copy cat shooter. In a suicide note sent to ABC News two hours after the shooting, according to reports, Flanagan praised the Virginia Tech shooter, Columbine killers and said that his “tipping point” was the Charleston church shooting.
Canterbury explained, “They already know that they are going to eliminate themselves in most cases or that the possibility is there, and we believe as an organization that the least amount of times he gets press coverage by name — it helps to reduce the effect on other people, because they realize they are not going to get the publicity.”
Former NYPD investigator Steve Kardian agrees with Canterbury. Kardian told Fox News’s Gretchen Carlson, “Unfortunately we see this happen and it’s likely that it will happen again. There will be some sort of copycat that will do this sort of thing.”
Kardian added, “Again we have instant access to it on our cell phones, so for people like this to get the word out to let the world know what he’s done to him, again, it’s his 15 minutes of fame.”