FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: ‘I’m worried it’s going to be open season now:’ What it’s like living in Baton Rouge.

The Albertsons employee gazed across the street at the B-Quik mart where, just 24 hours before, he saw two police officers and a sheriff’s deputy killed before his eyes. Sweat beaded on his forehead, which was lined with worry.

“It had a movie feel to it,” said the employee, who asked not to be named because it could jeopardize his job. The chaos, the crackle of gunfire, the shouts of “officer down” — it might have been a Hollywood battle scene.

He had seen gunfire before. He lived in Baton Rouge, after all. Guns could be quickly acquired from the sporting goods store down the interstate. Bullets, it sometimes seemed, were expended just as easily.

But this was different. These were police, crouching behind cars in tactical gear. In stunned, scared silence, he and his colleagues hunkered down for eight hours, until an official told them it was finally safe to leave.

“There’s a lot going on right now,” he said. “After everything that’s happening — Orlando, Dallas, what happened in France. Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. It’s all over the place.”

What’s all over the place?

“Murder,” he said.

Life in the era of Hope & Change.