Many years ago I was teaching, part-time, at Minneapolis
Community College Center for Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement. On that day I was running a scenario wherein two officers confront two men
in a very tight and dark hallway at the scene of a possible burglary. I had come
to know both of these students, one male and one female, from prior training
with them and I expected them to do well. They had demonstrated good communication and
officer survival skills in prior evaluations.
The two role players were full time male cops at a local
department and in this case they were playing the role of ex-cons who attempted
to break into a business without success and were on their way out when the two
students blocked their way.
I watched the event unfold from a point of view where I
could see and hear everything that happened. I was not under stress and I was
making careful observations about how the students were interacting with the
role players. I had run this same scenario several times already with other
students and I had some sense of how things should go, if everything went
right. What happened next is still etched into my training mindset and forever
changed the way I viewed future confrontations when I was on the street.
The students initially took control with good verbal
commands and they demonstrated good tactics except - the male student did not
get the handcuffs on tight enough on his suspect. I cannot tell you exactly
what happened next. I was there. I carefully watched the entire scenario and yet,
even immediately afterward, I had great difficulty putting it all together and
would not have been able to do so without the help of the role players. But here
is the bottom line and the reason for today’s blog.
The female student was the only survivor. Her partner was
shot twice in the back, with her weapon. One suspect was shot in the back, with
her weapon. The other suspect was shot in the chest by the male student, a
contact wound directly to the heart. The female student had no injuries, not
even a scratch. The entire incident took about 30 seconds and occurred in a space
about three feet wide by 10 feet long. She didn’t shoot her partner. One of the
role players did. Her partner did shoot the other role player. She was disarmed
early in the confrontation and after all was said and done she did recover her
weapon and fire the two shots into the back of the other suspect as he tried to
acquire her fallen partner’s handgun. Everyone in the scenario was initially
speechless, me included.
In my critique I made three points. One, you have to make
sure you put handcuffs on properly. Two, when you go to write this up, as the
only survivor and witness, you are going to get things wrong. I guarantee it.
You will even have difficulty accurately recalling what happened to you, much
less your partner. And three, the most important part of the critique. A lot of
people are not going to believe you. If this scenario was real, and this was you
and your training officer in the first few weeks of training, most cops will
call you a liar. They will blame your gender. They will blame your lack of
experience. They will make a hero out of your dead partner. But most likely,
your career will not recover from this experience, even though you did nothing
wrong and it was your partner’s poor handcuffing technique that was the
proximate cause.
As I read the StarTribune article today about the shooting
death of Terrence Franklin I was reminded of that training scenario from years
ago. My own experience on the street confirmed many times over that you cannot
conceive of some of the events you will encounter. If you can dream of a worst
case scenario for yourself there is always something even worse that is
possible. In the Franklin shooting there are multiple cops involved and I can’t
and won’t believe that they are all lying. Most cops do this job the right way.
Over the years I witnessed cops that should have been fired many times over
perform acts of selfless bravery. I am not a fan of Officer Luke Peterson but I
have no trouble believing that he would do the same and I applaud him for his
actions. It looks like the officers may have made some mistakes in the
confrontation with Franklin. I can live with that and at this point we have
to trust to forensics and the fact that there are multiple witnesses to this
event.
I have consulted on several cases in recent years where
suspects have died at the hands of the police and I feel bad for the survivors
in those families. I understand the frustration and anger and I would never
attempt to minimize how awful it must be for the parents, siblings, and loved
ones who are asked to trust that the police did what they had to do. But in the
end, that is why we have cops. And I can’t imagine, in even a worst case
scenario, a world without them because it would be even worse than that.
