The Day My World Changed; A Personal Story About September 11, 2001

I was on my way to the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Toronto one
 month after the events of 9/11.  I had a stop in NYC and was fortunate to know some high ranking
police officials who escorted me to the World Trade Center site.  Although a solemn place, I was
given permission to discretely make a few photographs of the site.  It was dusk and I was using
a Leica Minilux with a 40mm f/2.4 lens and Kodak 100 negative film.  Words alone cannot describe
how I felt standing there, knowing there were hundreds of bodies buried in the rubble.  This
scene is one that has haunted me since. (click to enlarge)

Today is the 25th anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001.  Twenty-five years seems like a long time, but that morning is still very clear in my mind. I can remember the confusion, the disbelief and then the realization that what I saw on television was not something happening somewhere else.  It was happening to us.  It was happening in our own backyard.  I was the Chief of Police in Newport News, Virginia and that day changed everything I thought I knew about being a police chief, law enforcement and about what it meant to protect a community.

I was sitting at my desk that morning speaking to one of my background investigators about potential new hires.  My wife called and asked me if I was watching television.  I replied I wasn’t.  She said I should turn it on as an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City.  Immediately my mind thought of the 1945 crash of a B-25 bomber into the Empire State Building.  I thought “wow,” again?  As I turned the television on, I watched an aircraft smash into the WTC.  I thought it was a replay but no, it was a live feed of the second aircraft flying into the other tower.  I was stunned.  My mind had a difficult time comprehending what I just saw and what the news reporters were saying.  One thing was apparent, from that moment on, everything changed for us in law enforcement.

Before September 11, terrorism was something I thought about, we all did in law enforcement, but it was not something that dominated my thinking.  We dealt with crime, drugs, robberies, assaults, domestic violence, traffic accidents and all of the other things that make up traditional police work.  We had worked very hard to partner with the community and ask them to help us help them.  That was called community policing and it worked.  It worked very well, in fact.  Crime had gone down every year.  Terrorism was something that happened in other countries or other parts of the world.  It wasn't something I expected to have to plan for in Newport News.

Everything then changed in a matter of minutes.

(click to enlarge)

Newport News, Virginia is a little different from many other cities.  There is Newport News Shipbuilding, where aircraft carriers and submarines are built.  It is a huge facility with obvious national security implications.  There were about eighteen thousand employees coming and going everyday through multiple entrances.  Newport News had natural gas pipelines, electrical substations, an airport, passenger train service, many defense related businesses and industries along with other critical infrastructure.  The Newport News Waterworks supplied water to every locality on the Virginia Peninsula, a population of over 400,000 at the time.  Poisoning the water supply was a huge concern.  All of these things had always been viewed as essential parts of the community.  Now we had to look at them from another perspective.  What if someone wanted to attack them?  What would happen if they did?  How do we protect them? How do we prevent an attack?  How would we respond if attacked?

One of the first things we had to do was identify all potential targets and decide where our limited resources would do the most good.  That wasn't easy.  Every facility seemed important.  Leaving any potential target unprotected could result in dire consequences.  But we didn't suddenly have hundreds of additional police officers, unlimited money or all of the specialized equipment we might need.

Then came the really difficult question; How do we prioritize the places we had identified as targets without the people, resources, equipment or money to protect all of them?  Once prioritized, do we then let the rest remain vulnerable?  The answer was, of course, that we can't.  However, every life was equally valuable.  We had to figure it out as we went forward.

As much as I wished there was, there wasn't a warehouse somewhere with everything a local police department needed to respond to terrorism.  We didn't have enough protective equipment for every officer—about 425, at that time.  We didn't have specialized equipment for every kind of threat we could now imagine.  We didn't have additional officers that we could take away from regular police work and assign to terrorism.  Crime continued, people were still being assaulted, traffic accidents were still happening and domestic disputes didn't stop because terrorists had attacked America.  Most of all the citizens were turning to us for answers.  They were afraid.  What should they do?  What could they do?  We had to prepare for something we hoped would never happen while continuing to do everything we had always done plus exponentially more and now we had to do it differently.

Luckily, the city leaders, business community and citizens did whatever was necessary to ensure we could acquire the additional resources to handle this new threat.  The Federal government started handing out grants like candy.  All of it helped us and I am still thankful for that support.  We couldn’t have done what we did without their help.

(click to enlarge)

Sophisticated intelligence, critical infrastructure, vulnerability assessments, emergency communications, evacuation, hazardous materials, mass-casualty incidents and coordination with agencies that had not necessarily worked together on a daily basis now became essential.  Police, fire, emergency medical services, public works, hospitals, utilities, businesses, schools, transportation services, the military and federal agencies all became part of a much larger picture.  

Additionally, new training had to be developed and implemented as quickly as possible.  Then there was the development of exercises to operationalize all this new training and preparation.  We had a daunting task ahead of us.

There was something else that became very real to me.  As chief, I had a responsibility to protect the citizens of Newport News (pop. 180,000 in 2000), but I also had a responsibility to protect the men and women of the police department.  Terrorism introduced dangers that were different from the everyday dangers of police work.  An officer responding to an attack could be walking into something completely different from anything for which they had trained.  There may be improvised explosives, bio-hazardous materials, chemical weapons, armed attackers or something else we didn't yet understand.

I was preparing to send my police officers (and I purposefully use the word 'my' because I considered them more than employees, but part of my family), along with firefighters and other first responders into these potential situations.  They would be the people running toward whatever everyone else was trying to get away from.  Protecting them and getting new training to them quickly was a very high priority on my long list.

So we learned.  We changed our plans.  We changed our training.  We changed the way we looked at buildings and infrastructure.  We changed the way we communicated with other agencies.  We learned to think about things that, just a short time earlier, would have seemed largely irrelevant.  We didn't become experts at terrorism overnight.  Nobody did.  Police departments all across the country were learning as they went along.

What made the difference was the people.  I was fortunate to have some extraordinary men and women in the Newport News Police Department.  They understood that the world had changed and that their job had to change with it.  The same was true of the citizens of Newport News, elected officials, the business community and others who understood that we were facing something very different.  Their support mattered.  It allowed us to make changes and prepare for things we hoped we would never have to face and fortunately, we didn't.  Not in the way we feared.

But the threat never completely went away.  What changed was our understanding of it.  We no longer had the luxury of thinking that terrorism was somebody else's problem.  It became part of our responsibility as local law enforcement.

September 11 changed much more than the way police departments operated.  It changed the way America looked at itself.  It changed the way we traveled, the way we entered public buildings, the way government agencies shared information and the way we thought about the safety of our communities.  But I think about it from a very different perspective.  I think about it as the police chief who suddenly realized that the rule book had changed; Not only changed, the old rule book was thrown out and we had to develop the new rule book on the spot.

(click to enlarge)

Everything I had learned during more than 25 years in law enforcement at the time was still important, but it was no longer enough.  The job had become bigger.  The potential consequences had become greater and the responsibility had become heavier.  By the time I left law enforcement, I had spent 36 years of my life serving and helping others.  Every day was worth it.  Terrorism, however, was the biggest challenge and biggest change.

Often, I still think about the people who lost their lives that day and the families who were left behind.  I still mourn their loss.  Their lives changed in a way that none of us who watched it happen can ever fully understand.  I think about the police officers, firefighters, paramedics and other first responders who went to work that morning and never came home.  I think about their families and the chairs that have sat empty for 25 years.  As a country, as a people, as individuals, I hope we never forget.  Sadly, with time, I think many will forget the lessons of that day.

I also think about the men and women who kept going.  They didn't miss a beat.  They went back to work.  New strategies were developed.  New equipment was purchased.  New training was developed and implemented.  They learned new things.  Partnerships, intelligence gathering and planning became more important.  They worried about things they had never worried about before and they continued doing the ordinary work of protecting their communities while preparing for something extraordinary.  Luckily, in Newport News, all the work we had done in our Community Policing efforts also paid off as our citizens became thousands of additional eyes and ears for us, reporting anything suspicious.  

On September 11th, we didn't know exactly what the future held.  We didn't know what the next threat would be or where it would come from.  But we did what police officers have always done.  We adapted.  We learned.  We prepared and we went to work.  That is what I remember most–how everyone rose to the occasion and met the challenge head on.  No hesitation.  No fear.

I am proud of the very small part I played in that effort.

More than anything, I am proud of the men and women I had the privilege of leading.  They were the reason we were able to meet the new challenges placed in front of us.  They didn't have all of the answers.  Neither did I.  But together, we figured out what we needed to do.

Twenty-five years later, I can still remember that day as though it were yesterday.  My life changed.  The lives of every police officer in America changed.  Our country changed.  The world changed.  But we didn't quit.  We adapted to a new reality and continued doing what we had sworn to do—protect the people we served.

For that, and for the men and women who did it alongside me, I will always be proud.  I will always be thankful and grateful that I had the opportunity to serve along with them and watch them overcome extreme adversity and prosper.

God Bless The United States of America.

Join me over at my website, www.dennismook.com .

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!

Dennis A. Mook

All content on this blog is © 2013-2026 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.