This is one of those discussion pieces that I try to leave alone because I have a chip on my shoulder and I try to keep my brain from running away and keeping me awake at night. My defensiveness comes from forty years of immersion in the world of law enforcement as an officer and leader and as an academic and trainer. Besides being a police academy trainer, I was immersed in deadly force studies after an officer-involved shooting of one of my officers when I was a police chief. I also work, in my capacity as a chaplain, with officers wounded in the line of duty that are so terribly ignored and disposable. My heart is with the cops, and I have trod there.
During that intense study and the years that have followed, I have become aware of the physics and biology involved in an officer’s decision to use deadly force. We pay more attention to the skill of a quarterback playing football than we do on the dynamics of an officer’s use of force. When those factors arise in court and presented to judges and juries rational decisions are made by the courts to find that the officer’s actions were reasonable and justifiable, despite ugly critique and disturbing videos.
Mr. French – and yes, thank you for your service – makes an attempt to credibly compare his military unit’s success in killing few civilians during wartime to the controversial killings by police officers. He fails and here’s why.
The theater of war is not the streets of America. “I walked the streets of local towns and villages. I experienced tense situations where you didn’t know whether to shoot or hold fire I walked the streets of local towns and villages. I experienced tense situations where you didn’t know whether to shoot or hold fire.” Right. You were at war. You didn’t want to kill a good guy or let a bad guy live to fight another day, but the consequences, though grave, are not the consequences that a police officer faces. There are allowances in war. Collateral damage is a pre-calculated cost. Allowing anonymous forces to get away to do anonymous damage in another battle lays differently at the combatants’ feet than the police officers.
French explains “our troopers faced constant attacks. IEDs claimed lives. Men died to ambushes. Indirect fire was a frequent threat to our combat outposts. Our troopers fought pitched battles in the streets, called in air strikes, fired thousands of artillery rounds, and killed, wounded, and captured dozens of terrorists.” Exactly. For the police officer, while having to make a deadly force decision is quite common (police officers are amazingly restrained in that regard – I know, the reader will not believe that the studies are quite clear on that matter), the exercise of that power is quite rare and, in the context of all the police/citizen contacts that occur, a statistical anomaly.
French states that “Good officers, like good soldiers, know that each encounter takes place against the background of a much larger context, with multiple factors influencing the outcome” and does so in the context of probabilities. He denies that officers should think that a deadly encounter is as likely in one situation as in another, that they should play the odds.
This thinking, which I understand is reasonable from the non-police citizen’s base of experience, does not reflect the police officer’s reality. When we hear that a suspect shot by police was mentally ill, only had a cell phone, was just a trespasser, etc, that belies the totality of circumstances faced by the officer. A barking dog complaint can be an indicator of a burglary in progress. A 911 hang-up can be a prelude to a murder. Worse case scenario thinking? Yes. When you buy a lottery ticket you have a one in a million chance of making the big score, but you have the same chance as anybody else.
Anecdotally I know a trooper who was shot by a man who he had contacted for urinating in public. I was knocked unconscious by a traffic violator, and struck by a vehicle whose driver was fleeing a vandalism. When 911 callers say they see a man with a gun, is the officer supposed to think “Ahh, it’s probably just a toy?” Making a deadly force decision is predicated on the circumstances at the moment of the fatal shot, not on whether your suspect is a misdemeanant or felon. French’s statement “Pursuit of an armed robber is different from the pursuit of a vandal, and both are dramatically different from rolling up on an actual firefight” isn’t true as it plays out in the real world of murky and fluid changes.
So, Mr. French, we don’t have the license that war allows. Our mission, as you point out, is largely service and investigation oriented. But the old Marine concept of being polite to everyone you meet and have a plan to kill them is not as ridiculous as you imply. It might be a good time to visit my article posted recently here, regarding California’s proposal to redefine the rules of engagement for deadly force: https://aztroopers.org/enews/4-reasons-californias-deadly-force-proposal-deserves-to-die
Now, Mr. French reminds us “it’s important to understand that the mission must come before personal safety.” Are we then to conclude that when the question of “is that person trying to kill me?” comes to an officer’s mind that her response should be “well, let’s see if he shoots me or not?” I won’t go into all of the micro-facts that go through the brain – many of them at a less than conscious awareness level – that telegraph a lethal intent, but those can be articulated and, when juries understand them, deadly force decisions that seem outrageous become quite rational. Of course, there are “bad” shootings, but not very many. And the list of shootings spouted by the average commentator always includes cases that have been critically examined and found lawful.
The idea that officers are set free from responsibility because they claim they were afraid isn’t as cowardly as French makes it sound. First of all there is a high ethical call for survival that includes the ability to continue to serve, continue to intervene, avoid being an impediment to other first responders, and completing the mission in which they were engaged. Secondly, the fear standard is not subjective, it is objective. The fear must be reasonable and articulated to meet the legal standard, not merely claimed. French disingenuously misappropriated an officer’s statement that French quoted in speaking about the Castile shooting to conclude that the officer shot a man because the man was exposing a child to second-hand smoke. Please, Mr. French, if you have to do those kinds of contortions, you reduce your credibility.
On a related note, French claims that “policing is far down on the list of the most dangerous jobs”. This is being recently challenged by closer studies of officer injury and death. And even if police work isn’t all that dangerous, as French implies and I vigorously reject, that’s not relevant to Officer A’s individual decision to employ deadly force in a given situation. French implies, in commenting on a recent shooting in Sacramento, California, that the fact no officer has been killed in the line of duty for a long time should somehow enter into the calculation of the officer who decided to shoot. (In a case that has not been fully examined forensically – but lack of facts never stopped an opinion).
French began on a weak premise and concluded with weak presumptions predicated on few facts. Being a soldier and being a police officer are not equivalents.
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