Archive

Tragedies of the Traditional Variety
In my last article I provided a recap of peace officer deaths occurring across the nation in the first six months of 2004. With a tally of 79 at the year’s halfway point, the honor roll of fallen cops was growing much too fast…and it’s continued to do so. In fact, July became the deadliest month of the year so far with 20 officer deaths, bringing the total of those to have died between July 1st and September 30th to 49. Predictably, the majority lost their lives in incidents involving motor vehicles.

Of 23 traffic-related tragedies, 9 cops died in auto accidents; 4 of them occurring as officers were responding to service calls or to assist other officers. Vehicular assaults claimed the lives of 8 other officers; four of which involved suspected drunk drivers.

Of the 49 families and law enforcement agencies who lost loved ones in the waning days of summer, 16 were left grieving due to attacks by armed criminal suspects, bringing the 9-month total of officers to be murdered by felonious gunfire to 45. This number includes a New Orleans policeman who succumbed to a gunshot wound sustained at the scene of a residential burglary in progress in March of 1985. (1)

It’s well established that America’s peace officers face the greatest danger as they intervene in disturbances and other crimes in progress, while effecting arrests, and during vehicle stops. The 92-day span between July and September proves the point:

On July 3rd, a Baltimore policeman was fatally shot after responding to a disturbance call and chasing two men who fled on foot. After running into a liquor store, the suspects opened fire, hitting the officer in the upper chest just above his protective vest.
On July 16th, a constable in the Town of Babylon, New York, was killed when a suspected drunk driver that he’d attempted to stop drove to his residence, ran inside and shot the officer from an upstairs window.

In Puerto Rico, a pair of patrol officers investigating the sounds of gunfire at a convenience store on July 17th found themselves in the middle of a robbery in progress. One of them was killed by suspects who exited the establishment with guns a’ blazing.
The Puerto Rico Police Department lost another comrade to gunfire on August 14th when an officer was murdered while trying to resolve a dispute at a restaurant where he was having dinner. The proprietor of the establishment knew the officer was an off duty policeman and asked him to intervene. When he did the suspect drew a handgun and fired 13 shots, killing the 27-year veteran and then stealing his duty weapon before fleeing.

On September 10th , two New York City detectives were slain after responding to assist a woman with whom they had previous contacts because of on-going problems with her son. The lady reported that the 28-year-old ex-con was again causing a disturbance and was trying to take her car. The suspect resisted the detectives efforts to arrest him and during a struggle, was able to disarm one of them. He then used the police pistol to shoot both officers.

An El Paso, Texas policeman who’d been out of the academy for just one month was killed on September 25th after he and his training officer responded to a residence where a man was trying to break in. The suspect, who was the complainant’s intoxicated husband, was armed with a handgun, which he used to fatally shoot the rookie officer.

Dangerous Defiance
The recent murderous attacks on officers prove that as perilous as traditional police/citizen interactions are, they’re even more likely to become deadly confrontations when suspects are emotionally unstable. And while many people are simply unable to respond appropriately to conflict, oftentimes their reasoning skills are further diminished due to use of drugs or alcohol.

But with increasing frequency, officers are forced to deal with dangerously defiant persons suffering serious mental impairment. In fact, of the 16 peace officers to lose their lives to felonious firearm attacks in the three-month span beginning on July 1st , 7 died at the hands of suspects who were mentally ill:

A New Orleans officer was slain by gunfire on August 9th as she and her partner attempted to serve a mental health commitment order. The mother of the 38-year-old man who became a cop killer had told the officers that he didn’t have any firearms in the bedroom where he’d taken refuge. As it turned out he had five guns, one of which he used to kill the officer when she forced entry into the room.
Just two days later, a Bossier City, Louisiana patrolman was ambushed as he stood at the front door of a home where a woman had reported a domestic dispute. The woman’s 65-year-old husband, said to be unstable and suicidal, felled the officer with two shotgun blasts before killing himself.

A Florida Detective died after being shot as he and other members of a task force were serving a search warrant at the home of registered sex offender believed to be involved in child pornography on August 19th. The suspect, who fired a rifle round into the investigator’s chest through his body armor, claimed to suffer from dementia caused by AIDS.

On August 18th, an Indianapolis policeman lost his life to a 33-year-old man who, by all accounts, should have been incarcerated a mental heath facility. After murdering his mother, the suspect walked down a residential street shooting an SKS rifle into the air. As officers arrived on scene, the man fired on them, wounding four patrolmen in addition to the one he killed. One of the wounded officers was able to end the rampage during an intense exchange of gunfire with the suspect. A sad aside: Police had confiscated several firearms from the suspect earlier this year when he was taken into custody as a combative person for a psychiatric evaluation. The department had to return the guns…the rifle used in the suspect’s deadly attack was one of those given back to him.
Just as life was returning to normal for Indianapolis-area law enforcement, a Butler University police officer was disarmed and fatally shot on September 24th. Answering a call that a man was acting suspiciously at a gym where the women’s basketball was practicing, the officer was obtaining information from the suspect when he was attacked. The suspect was later killed when he used the pistol taken from the campus cop to shoot at two deputy sheriffs. The suspect’s father reported that his son was suffering from a debilitating mental illness.

The Phoenix Police Department suffered a double tragedy on August 28th when two officers were murdered by a suspect reported by his family to be in the throes of a mental illness that had taken over his life, making him paranoid and delusional. The officers had responded to an apartment complex and learned that the suspect had shot another tenant. Believing the man might be holding a hostage, three officers attempted to force entry into his apartment and were immediately fired upon. All three were shot, two of them sustaining fatal wounds. The suspect then committed suicide.

Practice Universal Precautions
Officer survival has been my area of study has for many years. But despite intensive research and an exhaustive review of felonious assaults on cops, neither I or any other law enforcement trainer can produce a “Magical Tactical Checklist” that, if followed, would guarantee your personal safety in every law enforcement situation. There are simply too many variables, the primary one being the sheer unpredictability of human beings in crisis.

And while you cannot completely eliminate the dangers associated with police work, there certainly are things that you can do to mitigate them

An appropriate analogy can be found in the medical field, where everyone from first responding EMT’s to brain surgeons follow ‘Universal Precautions’ by always wearing gloves and oftentimes protective masks and face shields to limit their exposure to bloodborne and airborne pathogens. Though health care providers know that that every patient does not carry disease, they nonetheless employ these precautionary measures for a very obvious reason: they cannot instantaneously or with absolute certainty identify persons who are infectious.

Likewise, peace officers cannot easily determine who may pose a significant threat to their personal safety. And while cops, like medical personnel, face exposure to disease from the breath and body fluids of persons with whom they interact, they face a much greater threat of injury from physical attacks. As a result, peace officers must also practice a form of universal precautions in an effort to reduce their exposure to danger.

Universal precautions for police must begin with the presumption of danger: any police activity can rapidly deteriorate to a deadly encounter, and anyone with whom you have contact can quickly become an imminent threat. As vital as it is to acknowledge these realities, it’s also crucial to recognize that your survivability is your responsibility.

While there are some factors over which you have little control, you certainly have the ability to enhance your chances of survival. You do that by following the basic tenants of officer safety – the very same ones taught in the police academy.

Any event that involves a physically resistant or assaultive suspect is a high risk situation. Few would argue that high risk situations require advanced tactics, but many fail to recognize that advanced tactics are the basics mastered. I submit that the basics can be simplified to this: Prepare yourself mentally and physically to not only survive, but to flourish in the face of adversity. Have you?

ASK YOURSELF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

Do I properly maintain my safety equipment, know when and how to use it, and always carry a flashlight, chemical mace and my baton?

Do I mentally rehearse situations that would require me to employ deadly force?

Do I know at what point during a confrontation I will pull the trigger, or am I so ill-prepared that I think I will never have to?

Am I confident in my shooting skills? Do I go to the range to practice, or only when required to qualify? Does my practice involve more than standing still and shooting stationary targets in bright sunlight ? It should.

Do I mentally prepare a tactical plan while enroute to calls and conduct a critical self-evaluation of my performance after every situation?

Am I sometimes in such a hurry to clear the call {or so macho} that I don’t wait for back up?

While at calls, do I scan the environment for positions of cover and avenues of retreat, should they be needed?

Am I so gifted in the art of oration that I can relate to everybody, “kill ‘em with kindness,” and talk my way out of anything? Am I willing to bet my life on my verbal skills ?

How long could I endure an intense physical struggle? What have I done to keep myself in shape ?

And if I’m not expecting the unexpected and preparing for the inevitable confrontation, how much longer will Lady Luck sustain me?!?

Ladies and gentlemen, Lady Luck is too often a fickle phantom. Don’t put your life in her hands! Instead dedicate yourself to do what you must, so that you can “Live to Retire!”

(1) Source – The Officer Down Memorial Page (www.ODMP.org)

Doyle “D.T.” Wright
"DT" retired from the Riverside County, California, Sheriff’s Department, and since 1998 has traveled throughout the country to provide law enforcement training related to officer survival, high risk warrant planning and execution, police action shootings and tactical response to dynamic events.

If you have an immediate need for information, please contact us by phone at: 317-733-1971 or we can be reached by email at: dtw169@livetoretire.com