Public Safety

“There’s No Way to Fix That”: Winstrom on Sitting With a Grieving Mother

The chief says his job in the darkest moment of a mother’s life is simple: don’t make it worse.

Behind the podium, the timelines, and the case details that Chief Eric Winstrom laid out Monday about the downtown shooting that killed 19-year-old Philip “PJ” Sheppard, there was a quieter moment when I asked him to describe his conversation with Sheppard’s mother.

Chief Winstrom paused before answering, drawing on years of experience dealing with mothers of young men who have been murdered.

“Never an easy conversation. And my perspective on going into that conversation is that there’s nothing that you’re going to be able to say that is going to make it any better,” Winstrom said.

“Make Sure We Don’t Make It Any Worse”

Winstrom described the role of a chief in that moment not as someone who can offer answers, but someone whose job is to avoid causing further harm.

• “My job as a chief, our job as a city, is to make sure that we don’t make it any worse.” He said he spoke with the department’s victim’s advocate coordinator Monday morning, who was at the mother’s house checking in on her and the family.

The police chief said he and Captain James Reese, who oversees the department’s detectives and was on scene the night of the shooting, gave the family their personal cell phone numbers. He described the visit as difficult in a way that ran counter to the instincts that had drawn him to police work in the first place.

• “As a police officer, you want to be able to fix problems. We’re problem solvers,” he said. “But talking to a grieving mother who just lost her son, there’s nothing positive. There’s no way to fix that, no way to make it better.”

What remains, he said, is making sure the department and the city show up for the family in whatever ways they can, even as detectives continue working the case.

“So our job as an organization is to do everything we can to support her and make sure that on the darkest day of her life… we don’t make it any worse and we do what we can to support the family,” Winstrom said. “Very difficult conversation.”

Detectives continue to work the investigation into Sheppard’s death and are asking anyone with information to come forward. Winstrom has said the department’s primary goal remains simple: answers and justice for a grieving mother.