Thursday, March 06, 2008
A second to choose
John Long
Recent columns
From the RoundTable blog
I hadn't intended to revisit the subject of police shootings, but the volume and tenor of the responses I received from my column two weeks ago ("Don't be quick to judge police," Feb. 21) told me I had touched a nerve. Then another local shooting involving Roanoke County and Franklin County officers brought the subject into the headlines again.
In that column, I expressed consternation over the tendency of some observers to jump to premature and accusatory conclusions about officer-involved shootings. I was speaking of the overall phenomenon, not the recent events in Roanoke, for which all the facts are not in.
The responses I got were overwhelmingly positive, but a few writers took me to task. One reader responded with references to past shootings he felt unjustified. Perhaps they were. But that does not mean an officer involved in a shooting tomorrow is automatically in the wrong. My point was not that the police are infallible, merely that they deserve the benefit of a doubt.
One response surmised that officers should be allowed to fire their weapons only if fired upon first. Exactly how would such an altercation work? Picture a police officer, weapon drawn, facing a suspect 15 feet away pointing a pistol at him. "Drop your weapon, Mr. Bad Guy, but if you don't, I hope you shoot soon so I can respond! And, gosh, I hope you're not a good shot!"
Sounds like a formula for more flag-draped coffins and police widows and widowers to me.
But the most passionate comments I got were from police officers themselves, many in Florida, where the Internet version of my column was somehow distributed. By and large they appreciated my recognition of the difficulty of their job -- and the life-and-death decisions that an officer has to make in a fraction of a second. I was touched to receive the thanks of better men than I, and I thought their voices should be heard in the debate. Here are a few selections of e-mails I received:
"Over my 28 years in law enforcement, I have seen countless incidents where officer's split second decisions are misjudged ... you hit the nail on the head when you stated that not every police shooting decision has been the correct one, but every decision was made under similar circumstances, in a microsecond and under intense stress and pressure."
"[W]e are just human, yet thrust into a very violent encounter based on the actions of others ... by all means, when a mistake is made then corrective measures should be taken, but let us first understand what has transpired. The levels of violence and malice displayed by offenders these days is alarming and on the rise, yet there are those who continue to serve and protect despite the risk or the cost."
"I am one of the lucky ones that have not yet had to make the decision to take a life, although several of my friends have. I have seen ... what toll a shooting, even a justified shooting, can take on a person."
"If a reporter or attorney or the public knew of the 1,500 pages or more of rules, regulations, deadly-force matrix, risk-management questions, legal bulletins and cases a police officer has to absorb and digest ... they might have a different perspective."
"I challenge any one of the 20/20 quarterbacks to be put themselves in a life-threatening incident and then have to make a decision. I believe every officer who has to make a choice chooses survival. If you hesitate more than one second (almost half of that time is required to react) the officer is behind and may not go home to his family."
"We are given guns, taught to shoot straight, how to pull over a vehicle, put people in a prone position, etc. But I have never been taught how to deal with the aftermath of a shooting. ... Tell the readers to study a shoot, don't shoot scenario ... then cut it down to less than a second."
I can only imagine the stress of police work today. They endure abuse from drivers with expired tags, ridicule from sitcom writers, insolence from teenage punks at the mall and indifference from the rest of us. Yet they respond unflinchingly when we need them.
These are the men and women who ran into Norris Hall April 16 when everyone else was running out. Give them the benefit of a doubt when they need our support.
Long, a Roanoke Times columnist, is director of the Salem Museum and teaches history at Roanoke College.
