On a Sunday morning in 2009 near Seattle, Maurice Clemmons, a middle-aged African American man, shot four white policemen. The ensuing media coverage of the manhunt, and numerous legal system failures to contain Clemmons eclipsed any alternative pursuit to uncover and explore the social and environmental forces that may have helped shape Clemmons' psychological structure. In making a scapegoat of Clemmons, Seattle missed the opportunity to explore the long-term and insidious psychological impact of oppression, poverty, racism, and cultural violence. The author also explores individual and community psychological structure within the overarching metaphor and model of plate tectonics.