“I've Walked Through This Kind Of Firestorm”

As an Army psychologist, I was at Fort Hood in 2009 when a mass shooting occurred. Ten years later, I was a police psychologist in Dayton when nine people were gunned down. My specialty: PTSD

- Col. Kathy Platoni, U.S. Army (Ret.), Centerville, Ohio

Eight police officers sat across from me in a fluorescent- lit conference room. They looked exhausted, shell-shocked. Beside me sat a fellow member of the Southwest Ohio Critical Incident Stress Management Team. We’re a group of police officers, firefighters, paramedics, chaplains and mental health professionals who help first responders deal with trauma.

It was four in the morning, August 4, 2019. We were in the headquarters of the Dayton, Ohio, Police Department. Hours earlier, these officers had been on routine patrol in Dayton’s popular and crowded Oregon District. A lone gunman wearing body armor and carrying a high-powered rifle waded into the crowd and shot 26 people in 32 seconds.

The officers reacted quickly, shooting and killing the gunman less than a minute after his rampage started. Even so, nine victims died, including the gunman’s sibling.

Encouraged by my CISM team colleague and me, the officers tried to put what they’d seen into words.

“It all happened so fast.” “Chaos, screaming—people running everywhere.”

“Impossible to tell where the shooter was.”

“Bodies kept going down.” “Fear…anger. Wishing we could have saved more people.”

We let the officers talk. That’s the most important thing you can do after experiencing a traumatic event— reach out, tell someone what you’ve gone through, put your feelings into words. I’ve learned that truth in my nearly four-decade career as a military and civilian clinical psychologist.

I speak from more than professional experience. Ten years ago, I was at Fort Hood, Texas, when a lone gunman killed 13 people and wounded 32 others.

I was a soldier then, part of a combat stress control unit preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.