In January 1993, a gunman murdered seven
people in a fast-food restaurant in Palatine, a
suburb of Chicago. In his dual roles as an administrative
executive and spokesperson for
the police department, Deputy Chief Walter
Gasior suddenly had to cope with several
different situations at once. He had to deal
with the grieving families and a frightened
community, help direct the operations of an
extremely busy police department, and take
questions from the media, which inundated
the town with reporters and film crews.
“There would literally be four people coming
at me with logistics and media issues all at
once,” he recalls. “And in the midst of all this,
we still had a department that had to keep
running on a routine basis.”