I'm not sure it boils down to fear, maybe a small town reaction to a random and senseless tragedy. 8 deaths in a week, young, old and in between, that's alot, and creates a lot of uncertainty - if there's no pattern to who's being targetted it creates risk for people assembling people. The killings appear to be fairly random, so a school administrator or little league coach has to ask does it make any sense to expose 70 kids to risk of getting off the bus alone after school, walking home from a ballgame etc. It sounds too like the suspected killer had been a suspect for a while, it was a matter of locating him, and they had 70 officers looking in a place of just 25,000 people. And I'm not sure this situation resulted in fewer eyeballs on the street. Just because people aren't in summer school or playing baseball doesn't mean they aren't out on the streets. If this is anything like the smalltown I'm familiar with, there might have been just as many out with pitchforks and torches if they had a description. Anyway, strange situation, and really too bad for the victims here.