A lie murdered David Rose.
Five hundred cops packed the pews of an Atlanta megachurch on Friday to bear witness in person, to have a memory of the slain DeKalb county police officer that could not be sullied by lies or debased by silence.
Slowly, an honor guard of police officers in formal uniform raised their white-gloved hands in salute as Lt Jason Sawyer handed a folded US flag to Rose’s toddler, sitting next to her grandmother in the front pews, wearing a shirt with the words “My Daddy Is a Hero”. Her mother was not there – could not be there: she is pregnant with Rose’s third child.
It was only in this moment that the stone-faced wall of police officers and health workers and politicians finally broke down to weep.
Two weeks ago, a man reportedly deceived by anti-vaccination disinformation opened fire with rifles on the Centers for Disease Control, near the campus of Emory University. Rose responded to the shooting immediately. The gunman shot Rose dead, then killed himself.
Then the country moved on. Well, most of it.
Half the crowd at First Baptist church of Atlanta at the memorial were cops from Brotherhood of the Fallen, traveling from as far away as New York City and Aurora, Colorado to support Rose’s family. Most of the rest of the crowd worked for the CDC, or did before being fired by Trump.
Politicians filled a section – governor Brian Kemp attended, as did members of the legislature and city councils from around metro Atlanta.
Related: Gunman in CDC attack fired over 180 shots at building and broke 150 windows
When 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley was murdered at the University of Georgia by an undocumented immigrant in 2024, peals of moral outrage rang from the lips of every conservative politician in the state, from the stages of Trump rallies to the city council chambers of Georgia. Her murder became a catalyst for legislation targeting illegal immigration at the state and federal level.
The murder of a police officer and military veteran at the hands of a domestic terrorist while defending federal employees apparently didn’t elicit the same outrage.
Donald Trump has said nothing in public about this murder that CDC staffers can note. He has said nothing to Rose’s family, his grandmother said.
Internal communications from the CDC about the shooting make no reference to the gunman’s anti-vaccination motivations. While health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr – one of the most renown purveyors of vaccine conspiracy theories – visited the CDC offices after the shooting, he did not meet with line staff.
The women working at the church coffee shop whispered that JD Vance might attend. Or Melania Trump. Neither appeared.
More than one CDC employee referenced a comment by Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, captured last year by ProPublica. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.”
Well, we are traumatized now, one health researcher said.
“I thought it was bullets, but I didn’t realize they were shooting at us,” said one CDC employee, a young woman attending the memorial service who wished not to identify herself for fear of retaliation. “It was horrible and stupid, but I went to the window. As I’m standing by the window, all of a sudden, another round starts. A whole bunch of rounds.”
The gunman fired more than 500 rounds into the building. CDC employees found themselves stepping over broken glass for days.
“My colleague said ‘duck!’, and I ducked, and I literally crawled away,” she said. “We kind of ran and crawled to an interior office, and we stayed there. And we thought there were many shooters. We had no idea what was going on.”
No one affiliated with the CDC would allow themselves to be identified while speaking to the media. They are terrified of losing their jobs, they said. But one said the administration’s response severed their final thread of loyalty to the organization. They are loyal to their colleagues now. But not the government agency that employs them. And they are bewildered and betrayed by the silence.
The political figures attending the service were similarly quiet. Two months ago, a man empowered by far-right fear-mongering murdered a state representative in Minnesota and shot a state senator, along with their spouses and it passed out of the news cycle in a week without anyone doing much, one city councilperson said. But Edward “Big Balls” Coristine gets thrashed by teenage hoodlum’s on a DC street corner and Trump sends in the National Guard, he added.
Like the CDC staff, elected officials were reluctant to speak on the record, afraid of becoming a target in all senses of the word.
Related: Father of CDC shooter says son believed Covid vaccine had sickened him
There is a rote ritual to police funerals, and to the procedures of grief. Some of it is trite and formulaic, deracinated of its emotional value because of how expected it is. The benediction of prayer seems to feel like the tail end of the “thoughts and prayers” sentiment. The use of the phrase “the ultimate sacrifice” insufficiently conveys the moral upset of the murder of a good man by a lie.
“David Rose was a man whose life was defined by service,” said interim police chief David Padrick, noting his service in the Marine Corps before joining the county police force. “David was more than a coworker. He was family.”
Some at the CDC, too, have survivor’s guilt, said Gregory Webb, DeKalb’s police chaplain.
“Consider that this man who received six months of training, took on the weight of the world and in the face of danger, in the face of adversity, in the face of a violent suspect, shooting off all of these rounds, he ran into the fire.” Webb said. “Somebody sat beside him for the very last time in roll call room … The healing process is going to take a while. I don’t care who you are, we all grieve.”
Rose received a 21-gun salute. In the stillness following the fusillade, with mourners solemnly filling a life-sized cutout of Rose with signatures and laying flowers at its feet, Rose’s cousin quietly wondered when someone might ask how a man with plain mental health problems and increasing agitation could so easily lay hands on long guns.
Silence is her answer.
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