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Fleming, a Republican, has been the top Justice Department official in the Eastern District of Missouri since she was appointed to the job in December 2020 by then-Attorney General William Barr.

On Tuesday, the day after the deadly shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, Fleming and other federal law enforcement officials joined Mayor Tishaura O. Jones and various faith leaders for a vigil. It was originally scheduled to honor the 100 young people lost to gun violence in St. Louis since 2019. But the tragic death of 15-year-old Alexzandria Bell at her school elevated the event’s somber tone.

Here’s what Fleming said about gun violence:

“Prosecution alone is not the answer. We need more gun safety education. I think that’s quite obvious.�

There’s nothing particularly earth-shattering about that statement. But consider both the source and the context. Sitting a few spots from Fleming was Jones. As mayor, she’s been vocal about using some money previously dedicated to police budgets to reduce poverty. She wants more resources to address mental health. She pushed to reduce the jail population. She’s also talked about increasing pay for police officers, as well as other city employees. Jones, a Democrat, has repeatedly praised the law enforcement response to Monday’s shooting as brave, fast, courageous.

How might some of Jones’ critics respond if she had been the one to say prosecution alone is not the answer? What if U.S. Rep. Cori Bush said it? Or Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner?

The words would still ring true, but the response might depend on one’s opinion of the messenger.

That’s what makes discussions of law enforcement so difficult. Narratives are generalized. People retreat into their camps or bubbles. Nuance is frowned upon.

School shootings, however, provide a different lens to evaluate such issues. The horror of children mowed down by bullets scares us all. We imagine our own children, in our own schools, wherever they are, in that situation. We ask why. We are grateful for lives saved. We are unified in our unbridled desire for schools to be safe harbors — though we still divide when it comes to the solutions.

It struck me while sitting in the interfaith service with Fleming and Jones that there is much we can learn watching leaders of Christian, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim traditions laboring to find common ground.

The most minor of differences within organized religions can lead to splits. So when people with completely different worship traditions get together to learn from each other and pray together, there is a powerful unifying spirit at play.

Had Bell been shot in the streets of south St. Louis, and her assailant then shot by police, imagine how different the headlines and community response would have been. Rising homicides would have been blamed on Jones. A quick police trigger might have been criticized. The Back the Blue vs. Defund the Police debate would have spun on repeat, with people not actually talking to each other. But because it was a school, a place where we all share a common experience, the tragedy in many ways brings us together.

There were several heroes at Central Visual and Performing Arts that kept the body count low, starting with health teacher Jean Kuczka, who gave her life to protect her students. Teachers, administrators, students and security guards put into practice the intruder trainings that are now sadly commonplace in schools. St. Louis police applied the lessons first taught after the Columbine shooting in 1999, the ones they’ve trained on multiple times, the same lessons not followed recently by officers in Uvalde, Texas.

Now comes another hard part: responding to the multiple mental health needs in the community. Not just the needs at one high school, but at dozens, where the trauma will run high for a period of time as St. Louis recovers from the tragedy.

Those services, by the way, will cost money, just as the gun locks that Fleming’s office donated to try to reduce gun violence do. That money has to come from somewhere, and elected officials of good faith will have to work together to figure out how to help a community heal while making sure a strong police response can be replicated when the next tragedy occurs.

Providing for the public safety of St. Louisans takes more than prosecution. Fleming is right about that. It takes loving teachers, courageous cops, empathetic mental health workers, better gun safety, strong neighborhoods, communities of faith — and all of these disparate groups working in concert.

That last part might be the biggest challenge of all.