Face of MSU shooting response talks officers who didn't want to leave, misinformation
As he takes a seat in the compact and sparse public interview room, Michigan State University Interim Deputy Police Chief Chris Rozman notes that he would normally just speak at his desk.
The thing is, his desk is on the other side of locked doors at the police department and after a shooter killed three students and injured five other people on Feb. 13, officers responded in droves to scenes of horror. They saw the students that were pronounced dead, they sought out a killer and they fielded call after alarming call elsewhere on campus.
And so, Rozman says he won’t speak with media at his desk right now. The area behind those doors needs to be a private place for his officers to recuperate, to focus on their own healing.
Rozman does want people to know he feels the officers behind those doors and with other agencies saved additional lives that night, however. So, in a Monday interview with the Detroit Free Press at the university’s police station he discussed the Michigan State University shooting that killed Arielle Anderson, 19, of Harper Woods, Alexandria Verner, 20, of Clawson, and Brian Fraser, 20, of Grosse Pointe.
He discussed the shooting response through the eyes of his team, how officers are recovering, misinformation that emerged during their response and early thoughts on changes that might be made because of the shooting.
Here’s what we learned:
The night shift
Like the day shift at the MSU police department, Rozman had already called it a day, himself.
He was putting his own kids to bed when he started getting phone calls about the shooting, he said. He passed bedtime duty off to his wife and hit the road, and without being asked, many off-duty officers headed in, too.
Police have said the first shooting took place about 8:18 p.m. at Berkey Hall and the shooter — who police say was 43-year-old Anthony McRae of Lansing — then went to the MSU student union.
It was the MSU police night shift who were the first to enter the Berkey Hall classroom and see the first victims, Rozman said. Officers responded from across the area and agencies that night, and among the other early responders were Lansing police, East Lansing police, Meridian Township police, the Ingham County Sheriff’s Office, and the Michigan State Police.
Rozman first went to a quickly established incident command center “in the field,” he said. Duties were divvied up, with Rozman acting as the public information officer and working with communications manager Dana Whyte.
He stopped by the MSU police headquarters and put on his uniform. He then headed to another location where emergency operations are handled, a scene that might look chaotic from the outside.
It has a table all the officials working the incident can gather around, he said. He didn’t sit much. He’d spend the night pacing, on the phone, drinking coffee, getting updates on officers’ work on the ground, and making his way to face the cameras as the face of the police response.
Thinking about it about a week later, a moment that sticks with Rozman is when he started to walk out to say the worst words to those cameras — and to parents, students and everyone else watching — that three people were dead. It's the brief moment of pause he had where he had to think about how to say it.
He knew it was likely, and it was later confirmed, that they were Spartan community members.
“Being a father myself and having three kids, it hit me at that point that there are so many parents around the state that were watching this not knowing … if their student, if their child was involved,” he said. “So I think that's when I may have went off-script a little bit at the news conferences and said, we're going to be as human as we can and sharing this information because this is significant.”
He was standing about shoulder to shoulder with the highest ranking Michigan State Police official who responded when word came the suspect had been located and had shot and killed himself, he said.
Lansing police were present, but MSP confronted the suspect in Lansing, he said. And the MSP official was able to help get confirmation, with folks at the scene comparing images and clothing. They had to know for sure.
“I knew at the time that we had students and faculty and staff that were barricaded in rooms and closets that were in fear for their life,” he said. “And the fact that we could … tell them that 'there's no longer a threat, you are safe.' I was elated to be able to share that.”
Asked about the atmosphere in the emergency operations room, he said there was no big announcement that he saw and he went to tell the cameras, so he didn’t take in the response when everyone had learned the news.
“But there was, you know — I hesitate to say ‘relief,’ because the relief came along with a lot of sadness and sorrow for what our community was experiencing at the same time,” he said.
38 hours
To be clear, Rozman doesn’t want the focus on him. He was the face for the cameras, yes, but all the officers, across agencies, were giving it everything they had on the ground, by his description.
Rozman said he’d be comfortable saying that everyone on the 12-hour night shift worked 20 hours as the night of the shooting turned to the next day.
Rozman, himself, couldn’t quite sleep when he lay down from about 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. Feb. 14 in one of the hotel rooms offered up by campus partners, he said. He closed his eyes though.
“It was about 38 hours before I went to bed that day on Tuesday,” he said. “But that's not just me. … I know so many of our officers experienced this, where even though you're done, in your home, you should be tired … it's hard to kind of wind down at that point.”
Acting “valiantly” and “heroically,” officers had been “laser-focused” that night and followed their training, Rozman said. He also recognized the efforts of the East Lansing Fire Department, which was the first on scene providing emergency medical services and coordinating a massive response of ambulances. He, too, complimented the Ingham County 911 Central Dispatch team members, whose hard work was heard by barricaded students, who listened across campus while the shooting response unfolded.
Asked how MSU police officers are doing, he spoke in some generalities, citing privacy for the officers now dealing with the ramifications of what happened. Still, he said they're tired, yet focused, on the community's safety right now, and that their training around being trauma-informed outwardly is being turned inward on each other.
The department is encouraging officers to take care of themselves and knows that might look different for different people, he said. The department is also telling officers to take some time off if they need it, and supportive resources are being made available.
They’ve been working with behavioral science doctors as well as peer support teams, and services include small group sessions and one-on-one counseling.
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Asked about whether any officers took time off or any officers were back to work immediately, he said police officers in general are very resilient and committed.
“That's one of the challenges is some of the officers in this incident, I could tell them to go home, I could tell them to take a break, but I turn around, and here, they're here for 20 (or) 22 hours and I have to tell them to leave at that point,” he said. “So … we've had to do that in some situations, knowing that we can't stop them, they're going to be back the next day. And so, again, that goes back to everybody handling it and processing it differently.”
Misinformation and possible changes
Along with debriefing for emotional support and the investigation into the shooting itself, police are slowly starting to weigh the police response itself.
Normally, after something happens with police, they do a quickie conversation on it, known as a “hot wash,” and then have a deeper debrief, all in the first few days, Rozman said.
Of course, a mass shooting response is a complex incident, he said. They can’t even get everyone involved in a room right away as attendance would be into the “hundreds and hundreds,” he said.
Some conversations have been had and deeper dives will take place going forward. Overall, Rozman said they responded well and any changes going forward would likely be minor, and perhaps more focused on information streams.
A running theme of the night was misinformation, with students and community members exchanging unconfirmed reports, like the numerous calls that were coming across the police scanner of other shootings and incidents on campus.
“That's one of our takeaways is, how do we tell people … don't believe what you hear on the scanner?” he said. “That's why we need to be the ones to vet that information and to disseminate that information. And is there a better way for us to do that?”
As for the calls about other incidents themselves, Rozman said that police appreciated people calling in with concerns, but it may have been that well-meaning individuals heard strange sounds — like the sound of objects being pulled in front of doors as a barricade. Still, Rozman said federal partners also told police that sometimes uninvolved people use incidents of mass violence and amplify the crisis.
Each call will be reviewed and they’ll determine whether there were nefarious actors.
Informed that some students in the days that passed last week continued to question that there was a single shooter and where the shooter went — one student relayed a belief about the suspect getting into or being at Phillips Hall — Rozman refuted both.
There are a number of remaining questions about what happened, of course.
Questions such as, will anyone face charges in connection to the incident, where the shooter went, and whether a motive has been or can be determined with a dead suspect, among others.
Rozman said he didn’t have information to share on the charges question.
Information on the suspect's movements could come out in the coming weeks, he said.
When asked about the motive, he said investigators will be given the time needed to investigate thoroughly, and also noted there could potentially be a news media update later this week.
A school known to all
Rozman is a 2001 Michigan State graduate. A number of officers also went to Michigan State and have deep ties to this community.
That compounds the feelings around the shooting, he agreed when asked by the Free Press.
On Wednesday, when thousands of community members flooded the area around the campus landmark and student-painted message board known as the Rock for a vigil, MSU police officials didn't make their officers work it.
State police troopers in blue could be seen policing the event.
Rozman could be seen hugging students afterward. They thanked him and the department for their work.
Shortly after the students walked away, Rozman pointed out MSU police officers in plainclothes walking away, too.
They didn’t have to come this time, but they came anyway.