The public, some people in the public, not all of course…believe
law enforcement officers are supposed to take risks. That’s true, to a point.
If the risk carries near certain-probable death, the venture is too risky. It
is too dangerous for law enforcement.
I’m retired now but I
was a police officer for 28 years, 2 months, 22 days. From Reagan too Trump.
I am a human being. I have one life. Once it is gone it is
gone. I have no recollection past lives and I don’t believe in that. I don’t know what
happens after I die but from the living side of things the answer is…nothing,
because you’re dead. Now that I have more yesterdays than tomorrows the value
of life has really increased. As a
police officer
I wasn’t a second class citizen. I didn’t abrogate my rights
to life because I entered a job that carried risks. I am not a public safety
whore; you can’t tell me to risk certain death because it’s “your job”.
Folks, I don’t mean “might get me hurt or killed.” Most
things in law enforcement carry the risk of getting hurt or killed. I mean when
you have specific information and facts that lead you to believe if you go any
further you will more than likely die or be miraculously lucky if you don’t.
For example: If I am a criminal and I am standing inside of
a room armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle, and I have an unobstructed
view of the only doorway leading into the room. If it is my intent, I can kill anything
coming through “the fatal funnel” of the doorway. Probable certain death is breaching
the doorway and getting shot.
Probable certain death can usually be avoided and in law
enforcement training can be summarized as follows: “Don’t do what they did
because that’s how they died.” We had thousands and thousands of dead officers
to use as a blackboard, connecting dots. All along the way improving safety.
Quite often is heard the expression “The police put their
lives on the line every day.” It’s easy to dismiss such a generalized statement
because it’s factually untrue.
Yes, folks. Law Enforcement officers when responding to a
call for service are putting their lives potentially at risk. Responding to a
bank robbery in progress isn’t safe. Pulling over a vehicle for a traffic
violation is absolutely unsafe due to the variety of unknown dangers (is the
car stolen, are they fleeing a crime, etc.) Responding to a burglary alarm isn’t
safe. Almost all in progress calls for services are events in which the caller is
somehow unsafe and they are calling for that reason. Domestic violence calls
are extremely dangerous. Barricaded suspects are not safe. Active shooters are
not safe situations.
Officers use tactics, strategies, plans, communication and
other methods to resolve incidents. Training begins in the police academy but
primarily takes place within a training car. Most police officers will tell you
it takes about five years (10,000 hours) to be completely competent. To be
clear, on graduation day from the police academy a rookie cop knows more about
law enforcement and their job than someone that has never worked there at all.
The entire training process in law enforcement deals with managing
potentially deadly situations. While the death of an officer is called a
sacrifice, I never thought of it that way. The deaths, I have learned from
training, were generally the officer’s fault; they were complacent, lazy,
missed cues, used tombstone courage and entered situations beyond what they
could handle, got electrocuted, hit by a train, etc. Typically, the only
avoidable death (using 20/20 hindsight) is an ambush. That’s a fake call for
service, luring the officer to a location or it is an ambush of opportunity.
A true sacrifice is dying so another person can live. If
society had that belief about me, the people I worked with, or anyone associated
with them in law enforcement they are deluded. It bears repeating, a fool dies
to save another person. The only case that gets a pass from me is when parents
drown trying to save their children or fall to death after a child fall from a
height. Although we have no way of knowing, at some point even those parents
might have a moment of clarity right before they die.
A person either thinks law officers are ennobled and have a
special place in heaven or believe that a cops life is less valuable than that
of another human because of bias towards police or worse, the stupid belief “that’s
what they’re willing to do.” If you were told and/or if you believe a police
officer believes their life is worthless than your life, you have been life to.
If you believe a police officer will die trying to save you, you are wrong.
Indeed, I did things at work that could have killed me. I was the victim of
attempted murder more than ten times, like most police officers. If necessary,
I would do something that might get me killed if I thought it could save you.
If I knew the only way to save you would be to almost die,
you will not survive if my help is required. If you were struggling in water, I
wouldn’t jump in to save you because I wouldn’t be able to save you and would
probably drown. Unlike the movies, you cannot punch a person in the face
knocking them out and them swim with them to shore.
I am writing this in the wake of the Uvalde shooting and due
to media coverage of the response by the officers. The incident ended when the
suspect was shot to death by the police. The officers involved killed a human
being. They have lawyers and aren’t talking with anyone until their case
resolves. The other officers in the hallway are going through an internal
investigation and they aren’t talking with anyone.
As a result, the media coverage has interviews with children
present at the school but not in a murder classroom, interview with people that
arrived hours after it was over, interviews with sociologists, community
activists, politicians and others with no law enforcement workplace training or
experience. The media went to experts, knowing that experts are experts in
proving the other expert wrong. They talked with mass shooting law enforcement
trainers---none of whom has been in an active shooting once-in-a career event.
The media deemed this an active shooter situation when it is
better classified as barricaded suspect-hostage taking. The media interviewed a
law enforcement executive who made the worse mistake in this incident by law
enforcement. Without the facts, data and information needed to make the
assessment, he claimed Uvalde and the officers at the scene made a mistake and
said he would have done it differently.
While the public can have no idea how long an investigation
takes, should take, what it should include and why…they do know that when
airplanes crash the FAA says it will take months to review the data. When I
reconstructed fatal collision, even if the cause was relatively obvious, I
wouldn’t tell the media “Here’s how it happened”. An investigation of the
incident, the scale and magnitude of such being massive and involving multiple
agencies, laboratories, evidence chains, witness interviews…will certainly take
more than the hours it took to say the officers made the wrong decision.
It bears repeating. If you don’t work in law enforcement but
work…you have an idea of how long things take to get done. You know how to make
shortcuts. You know how to do it right. You know when it’s premature or you don’t
have enough to finish.
Police Officers have a job that frequently encounters
potentially life-threatening situations. Responding to those situations, which
puts a life on the line, is a job requirement. Dying so another person can live
is not a part of police work. The belief that police officers will die to save
you is foolish. Police Officers are not second-class citizens and their life
isn’t for sale. It is not “their job” to die for you. Officers take risks, but Tombstone
Courage isn’t taking a risk, it’s suicidal.
While everyone wanted the officers in Uvalde to storm the
room, the officers saw what you didn’t, haven’t and probably will never see.
The medical examiner had to use alternative methods to identify bodies in some
cases. That’s because the children had their heads blown over with a .223
caliber bullet. Getting shot by friendly with an M-16 during Vietnam from 500 yards
away is one thing and shooting a kid in the head or body from several feet away
is something else. The blood, gore, smells of blood, body fluids-shattered fat,
urine, feces, the contents of stomachs, mixed with gunpowder and classroom
papers. That’s the inside of the scene. Two officers sustained “grazing”
injuries is how the media reports it. In reality they were shot. They didn’t
die. They aren’t going to die and it doesn’t fit the “cops did nothing” narrative,
so they are ignored. Folks, if you see two co-workers get hurt you are really
stupid if you do the same thing.
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