“Three murders in 48 hours.”

“Three” and “48” are two numbers, joined together by grim headlines, that Federal Wayans have seen over and over. They’re disquieting in the context of murders within a city that usually averages four homicides per year, and the community is rightly shocked by them.

That shock, however, should not turn into panic.

Many in Federal Way have reacted, understandably, by calling for deep, systemic changes, hoping that dramatic measures proportional in magnitude to the severity of the tragedy will restore their assaulted sense of safety. Residents have variously demanded an influx of new police officers, metal detectors in schools, an expansion of Safe City cameras to as many inches as are available, and a wholesale abandonment of being active after sunset.

It’s subjective as to whether any of those ideas, in a vacuum, have merit. Perhaps there will be a time when the ideas, the wisdom of which can be easily questioned, will be unquestionably the wisest course of action.

Now is not that time.

The evidence, thus far, is that the three murders were unrelated to each other. Bound as they are by only the superficial similarities of geography and brutality, each horrifying incident should be taken as an individual act, not as a wave, a trend, or a sign of a rising dismal tide. Poetically, they are isolated acts inflicted on undeserving innocents by unimaginable vermin. Prosaically, they are statistical anomalies that are rarely duplicated and are never foreseeable.

More police could not have stopped such random, senseless, inhuman actions. None of the murders happened on school grounds. Security cameras can only do as much as their visible ranges allow, and maximizing those ranges means subjecting ourselves to an Orwellian parody where we never have the comfort of being alone with our thoughts.

No one but the killer or killers can be blamed for what happened. Senselessness like this cannot be expected or truly eradicated, and it is not something that can be blamed on the police, the mayor, the council, or anyone else.

Residents should be wary of looking too hard to authority figures or cameras to prevent the next random and unpredictable crime. There is no need to wait for an authority to tell us what needs to be done.

There is absolutely, in times like these, a need to look to each other. We should live our lives and smile at our neighbors and consider deeply how we, not someone else, can help make this city a place we’re proud to call home.

If we want to do something to combat violence, we should get involved in this community. Volunteer your time – the city of Federal Way has a volunteer recruitment site that can help find an opportunity that works for you. Federal Way Public Schools has a similar site that can help connect you to tutoring, administrative support, and other needs. Federal Way’s Communities in Schools, a dropout prevention organization, is always in need of mentors. FUSION and the Multi-Service Center would love your help. At the time of this writing, even the Federal Way Police Department, overtaxed as they are, needs volunteers to help repair police vehicles and assist with their Empty Car Auto Theft Reduction program.

Each of the murders were tragedies that devastated families, inspired fear and appalled a community. But we can’t lose sight of the fact that terrible acts, even three of them in strikingly short order, do not define Federal Way.

After any tragedy, especially one of such powerful gravity, each of us must make a choice as to whether we get caught in the gravity of the tragedy or break free of it. As humans, as Americans, and as Federal Wayans, we’ve broken free in the past. We can do so again.

The Mirror’s Editorial Board is a seven-member panel made up of the Mirror’s publisher, its editor, and five residents from the community. The positions expressed in editorials produced by the board are the Mirror’s official positions, and those positions are decided following a simple majority vote taken after extensive consideration, discussion, and a preponderance of information.