Every day the media brings images of terrorism and war into our living rooms. These images can be haunting. People jumping from the World Trade Center, the constant conflict in the Middle East—how can we keep ourselves from feeling haunted by what we see?
Recently, I talked with someone who is confronted with these kinds of images just about every day. Captain Robert Kelly is Commanding Officer of the Detective Division of the Mount Vernon Police Department in Mount Vernon, New York. Mount Vernon is listed in the 1990 census as the ninth most densely populated city in the United States and is an immediate neighbor of New York City.
Kelly has spent the last 12 years of his total 20 years with the police department as a supervisor assigned to the Detective Division. During his current tenure, he and his staff have investigated more than 100 homicides and more than 20,000 of such crimes as burglaries, robberies, sex offenses, kidnappings, assaults, narcotics offenses, stabbings, and shootings.
