The horrifying scenes of school shootings are impossible to picture for all but a few people: those tasked with meticulously documenting the scene. In a lengthy piece for the New York Times Magazine, Jay Kirk recounts what Detectives Art Walkley and Karoline Keith and Sgt. Jeff Covello took on when they were assigned to photograph, measure, and collect evidence at Sandy Hook Elementary in the wake of the Dec. 14, 2012, massacre that left 26 dead. Kirk describes the mechanics of being a crime-scene investigator as well as the psychological toll. Keith had tried to quit two years prior after realizing "she could no longer go for a walk in the woods without mistaking every flesh-colored rock for human remains." She was convinced to stay, and she and Walkley ended up being the two tasked with writing a summary for each of the 1,495 photos taken of the scene.
The horrors are unimaginable, but Kirk's writing makes them a little more real, describing the moment when Walkley, Keith, and Covello first walked into Classroom 8, "where they all stood in silent disbelief, a light drizzle on the window ticking off each annihilating second, staring into the tiny bathroom. Where the children were packed in so tightly that the inward-hinged door could not be shut all the way." Kirk makes the larger point that perhaps "nothing has changed [regarding gun laws] because we have not yet been made to see" the reality. And yet he outlines why we haven't—in this case, Connecticut state law keeps the photos out of the public eye, and even if the law changed, a news outlet would have to make the decision to share them. "Until that unlikely moment arrives, the full truth of these images and those of shooting after shooting ... will live on only in the atrocity exhibition that exists in the memory of those who photograph, measure, and collect the foul evidence." (Read the full piece.)
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