By Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 10, 2007
RICHMOND, May 9 -- He has responded to blizzards, hurricanes, grisly crime scenes, race riots, terrorist attacks and violent shipyard and coal mine labor disputes.
But starting Thursday, retired Virginia state police superintendent W. Gerald Massengill, 64, will face what may be his most challenging task yet: investigating the circumstances surrounding the April 16 massacre at Virginia Tech.
Massengill will head an eight-member panel that will sift through thousands of pages of documents and conduct dozens of interviews as it seeks to answer how and why Seung Hui Cho was able to gun down 32 people before killing himself.
Massengill will be operating under a national spotlight and mounting political pressure to produce a report that explores several controversial issues connected to the incident, including police procedures, the state's mental health system and gun control.
In an interview this week, Massengill said he will rely on his experience overseeing some of the state's biggest crises, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon and, a year later, the Washington area sniper shootings.
"When you come out of things like that, you look back and say: 'What can we learn from it? What can we do to help people in the future if these things were to happen again?' " he said.
Republicans and Democrats applauded the selection of Massengill by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D). "When they named Gerald as head of the panel, the panel instantly had credibility," said Kenneth W. Stolle (R-Virginia Beach), chairman of the state's Crime Commission.
After starting his career in 1967 as a trooper patrolling Isle of Wight, Va., Massengill quickly rose through the ranks.
He gained a reputation for being diligent, organized, methodical and so nice he defied the stereotypical image of an uptight state trooper. "I knew instantly he needed to be in a significant position of leadership," said former police superintendent M. Wayne Huggins, who made Massengill one of his top deputies in 1994.
Despite his folksy charm, Massengill wasn't the type of trooper someone would want to pass while speeding.
As head of the Agency's Bureau of Fielder operations between 1994 and 2000, Massengill had what many consider a religious fervor to crack down on aggressive drivers, saturating highways with troopers on the alert for violators. During a particularly aggressive push by Massengill, deaths on Virginia interstates fell by one-third from 1999 to 2000.
In 2000, Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) named Massengill superintendent.
Massengill soon encountered criticism for what some saw as his stubborn response to concerns over racial profiling.
African American lawmakers were furious that he was ignoring Virginia's history of racial discrimination after he wrote in the spring 2001 issue of Virginia Trooper Newsletter, "This department has never had a policy or practice known to single out citizens for traffic stops based on race, gender, age or other criteria," according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Massengill gained respect for improving the agency's crime-fighting and public relations capabilities during the tight budgets of the Gilmore years. He worked with federal officials to secure funding to outfit troopers with better weapons, bulletproof vests and vehicles.
"He has never stopped exploring new ways to do our job better," said Huggins, now director of the Virginia State Police Association. "He would read something about what some other state is doing and say, 'We need to do that here.' "
On Sept. 11, 2001, Massengill said, he was watching the news about the fires at the World Trade Center when an Arlington-based trooper called him to say he saw a low-flying airplane hit the Pentagon.
In the months that followed, Massengill led the effort to equip state troopers with radios that made it easier for them to communicate with one another and other first responders.
His efforts after Sept. 11 helped persuade Gov. Mark R. Warner (D), who was elected in November 2001, to keep him on as superintendent.
In fall 2002, Massengill led Virginia's efforts against the Washington area sniper. At one point during the manhunt, Massengill organized one of the largest police dragnets in Virginia history after a motorist in Spotsylvania County was shot and killed. Within minutes, more than 100 officers had erected roadblocks, tying up traffic for miles.
The snipers got away, prompting second-guessing. Massengill refused to be distracted by the media attention or questions about police tactics, according to others involved.
"We would go back to Massengill and he would just say, 'Here's why we did it, and here's why it was the right decision,' " said former attorney general Jerry W. Kilgore, adding that officials quickly concluded Massengill "knows what he is doing."
Massengill said that he dealt with concerns during the sniper investigation that were similar to those being expressed about whether Virginia Tech's police department was too hesitant in the nearly two hours between when Cho shot two people in a dorm room and his rampage on the other side of campus.
"I think we are going to find a lot of things were done the right way," he said.
Massengill retired in 2003, but Warner lured him out of retirement in May 2005 to head the scandal-plagued Virginia Department of Gaming and Inland Fisheries. Massengill is credited with boosting morale within the agency and tightening ethics policies before leaving in August.
Massengill hopes his latest call to public service will be his last.
"I'm looking forward to getting back into retirement," said Massengill, who lives on Lake Chesdin, near Petersburg.
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