Ruminating on the memory of Steve Cox

It’s been over a year since Deputy Sheriff Steve Cox was gunned down while investigating a shooting in White Center. For the White Center neighborhood the trauma refuses to abate. There is a dull pain that will not go away. I feel it and I know others do as well. Steve’s absence is like a missing limb –you feel its presence but when you go to use it, you find that it is gone. We keep waiting for Steve to swing around the corner in his cruiser and check in, like he used to and announce, “how are things goin’ here?” But there is no cruiser and there is no Steve Cox. There’s just his absence and that hollow pain.

I see Steve’s mother around the neighborhood. She still wears the grief that she clearly feels. I cannot imagine the pain a mother must feel burying her son. I wonder if the pain ever ceases.

Steve’s widow has sued Washington State for contributing to Steve’s death by failing to monitor the punk who killed him. The lavish funeral and the hero’s wake do not still the rancor that remains. And we, the survivors, are left to sort out Steve’s legacy.

Who speaks for the dead?

As I write this piece, various groups and individuals assert their entitlement to bear Steve Cox’s legacy. A memorial committee labors on but is deeply divided over issues both symbolic and trivial. To whom should we defer? Steve’s widow, Maria? Steve’s mother, Joan? Steve’s brother, Ron? Steve’s fellow deputies? Or the community that Steve served? Who should have greater say? Who loved him more and who is best suited to honor his memory. Antipathy grows.

White Center is today a divided community. The encomiums to Steve Cox’s legacy have exposed simmering rifts. Annexation becomes a flash point. Pro-Burien folks challenge the legitimacy of the pro-Seattle folks. Old timers challenge the legitimacy of newer arrivals. Other rifts are exposed: those between business owners and home owners; between black and white, immigrants and non-immigrants, professionals and craft-workers, Latinos and non-Latino, etc.

Ironically, the mass held on the anniversary of Steve’s death drew only a handful of people. Unlike the public ceremony following Steve’s death, at the mass there was no governor, no police chief, and no mayor in attendance at this mass. There were a few law enforcement colleagues and a few community members, but that was it. For some people, it seems that the time to honor the man, Steve Cox, has passed. What remains is the fight over his legacy, and for that we need no encomiums. So the battle begins.