In a scene from Law and Order Special Victims Unit, Detective Benson aims her pistol and
repeatedly screams “drop it or I’ll shoot” as the perpetrator reaches for his gun. She hesitates,
warning him of her intention before firing her weapon in an attempt to spare his life. This is often the way encounters are portrayed between the police and the public in movies and on television; verbal warnings before firing, shooting at a limb to disable or using timely and thoughtful crisis intervention techniques that result in the least possible injury to the subject. Law enforcement officials are often shown to use deadly force as a last resort and only when there is an imminent threat of death or serious injury to the officer or others. We see agile officers kicking knives from the hands of assailants, others using physical holds to restrain and control threatening individuals. The compassionate officer urges the suspect to lay down their weapon to avoid further infractions and jail time. Unfortunately, these scenarios are often not played out in Real Street USA, in your hood or mine, wherever that may be.
Michael Allen, the brother of a 66-year-old man shot to death by police on June
6th in Albuquerque, New Mexico, commented on the killing during an interview with KRQE 13
news a few days following the incident from his home in St. Petersburg, Florida
(http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/brother-of-man-shot-by-apd-speaks-out):
I don’t understand why they couldn’t have used a non-lethal method to restrain
my brother, said Allen. I don’t care if they would have shot him just to wound
him, but I don’t believe they had to kill him, I just don’t see or understand that.
Regardless of where you live it is likely that there has been an officer involved killing that has
made headlines in your local news. Interestingly, while we are now aware of the massive
government data collecting on US citizens following the release of information provided by
whistle-blower, Edward Snowden, the government does not collect national data on the number
of killings by police officers in the US. The only data that exists presently is that which has been
collected and shared via Wikipedia for an entry entitled, “List of killings by law enforcement
officers in the United States.” Unfortunately, not a complete and comprehensive list. Based on
the information available, there were at least 587 officer involved killings in 2012. The list
includes all incidents, those considered justifiable homicides as well as those may have involved unnecessary use of deadly force.
The war zones of our cities and towns where crime, heavy drug use, un-diagnosed mental
illness and the ordinary frustrations from poverty and despair, have always offered quite a
different story of the response from law enforcement than that depicted in the movies. Police
officers working the streets of depressed communities are presented with challenging
situations that cause them to operate at a heightened stress level. This is often used to justify
more extreme management of economically blighted neighborhoods; cold, aggressive and
brisk. These harsh responses to law enforcement are not exclusive to our impoverished and
heavily populated cities. While they occur with less frequency outside our city war zones, there
is a common acceptable protocol used by all law enforcement agencies that dictates a shared
response to threats or perceived threats, supported by a government that promotes an authoritarian
approach, an unforgiving approach, to controlling its citizenry. An officer’s hasty perception and
misinterpretation of a situation can lead to the use of lethal force, almost always ending in death.
In the burbs, in rural America as well as in the city, law enforcement deal with threats using
common best practice: AIM CENTER MASS!
Center mass. It’s ‘operations central’ for your body, houses your heart, a most
important muscle that sends blood to all parts of your frame. Your lungs are also
here and they are necessary for the balanced exchange of oxygen and carbon
dioxide. You got nerves. lots of nerves that pass through center mass…. This
folks is where we are going to put our bullets.
These are the words of Roy Bedard’s drill master while attending police academy training,
from an article he wrote, Shooting Center Mass: Shoot to Kill or to Stop, posted on policeone.com. Bedard discusses the difference between shooting to stop, the preferred and one might claim, misleading wording, which could imply the intent to aim for a limb or a shoulder as to not mortally wound; and shooting to kill, which conversely, sounds as though there is the intent to cause death, not at all what might be palatable to the public. Is there nothing more to this than semantics or is this intentionally misleading and deliberate. Is there is a difference between shooting to kill and aiming center mass, aiming for the heart, lungs, and intentionally firing to stop, to cease life in the most expedient and assured way? Is there an attempt, perhaps, to place justification for aiming center mass in those carefully selected law enforcement words? And, is there an intentional effort to mislead the public, to manipulate the public’s support for law enforcement? Mr. Bedard’s drill master pumping-up his rookies, his students who would soon be out on the streets to keep us safe (http://www.policeone.com/Officer-Safety/articles/3468112-Shooting-center-mass-Shooting-to-kill-or-to-stop/):
Two shots to the body, center mass….follow it with one to the head ….
Remember, the ultimate responsibility for taking another human life is yours.
Mhai Scott was shot five times by an officer while at work serving pizza samples at her local
Costco in Sterling, Virginia in late May of this year following a single phone call from a Costco
employee that encouraged the police to rush to the location. A Costco employee was
interviewed following the incident and claimed that Ms. Scott “was saying strange things about
the pizza.” She also alleged that she threatened her supervisor. To the contrary, two customers
that had contact with Mhai just prior to her death, had quite a different perspective.
Elizabeth Avelar, told reporters “the woman was very nice, very polite.” And, another
customer, Nora Lateef, said that Mhai was coherent and was simply asking why she was serving
pizza samples of a product that doesn’t exist – one that they had run out of.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPA4qsTlUZU).
Ms. Scott was reported to have been wielding two lethal weapons, a knife and a scissor which
may very well have been used to prepare her samples. She was 5′ 2″ tall and
weighed 98 pounds. According to the Costco optometrist that was present at the time of the incident
there was a half minute…just thirty seconds from the time the two armed male officers arrived at the Costco location to when he heard the shots fired that killed the 38-year-old mother of two. The initial report indicated that the officers attempted to tase her but the instrument was either inoperable or did not make contact. A recent report, following her autopsy, indicated that she was tased though the effort was ineffective. Ms. Scott was unaware that the police had been called and most assuredly felt threatened by the arrival of the armed officers. Two men with guns, a single call from an employee that may or may not have provided an accurate description of Mhai Scott’s mental state and intentions, rush the scene and make a hasty decision to shoot. She was hit in the chest with five bullets. A sixth fired by the assaulting officer hit his partner in the leg, a ricocheted bullet gone astray.
Aim to shoot center mass, two to the chest and one to the head. Well, it seems that this is
becoming old school and being replaced by a more assured “shoot to stop” method: “shoot
until the threat is no longer present.” Three to the center, five, nine, or whatever it takes to stop the threat. Law enforcement officials may call it what they choose but those opposed to this practice claim that when you pump a dozen bullets in someone’s chest you are going to do more than stop them. The insistence on the wording may as well work to rationalize the shoot to kill policy to protect officers from acknowledging that they intend to kill when they make the decision to use deadly force. Uniformed men in blue, armed with the power to kill, shiny badges demanding passive and speedy responses, non-compliance in a moment of irrationality, and you are dead. No discussion, no attempts at re-direction or de-escalation, no second chance to plead your case.
Four minutes had passed from the time the police arrived to the moment the bullets blasted
through the chest of Vincent Wood, a 66-year-old Vietnam veteran, on June 6, in Albuquerque,
New Mexico. He suffered from PTSD according to his brother, James Allen. He was armed
with two ten inch knives, flailing them about in a parking lot. According to a witness,
Mr. Wood was between six and twelve feet away from the first responding officer when a second
officer arrived on the scene firing the shots that killed the distraught 5′ 7″ man. A crisis intervention officer was in route to the scene to de-escalate the situation as the second officer arrived and fatally shot Mr. Wood. APD is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for the department’s unusually high number of police shootings in recent years, prompted by public dissatisfaction with a police force criticized for having rash reactions in dealing with mentally ill and emotionally disturbed individuals. The department responded by adding a team of specially trained Crisis Intervention Officers equipped to deal individuals like Mr. Wood. Before the crisis intervention officer had arrived, that second officer responding to the scene jumped from her car with gun drawn, aimed center mass and opened fire.
That movie scene where they clear the area and talk the guy down or use their foot to kick the
knives from the assailant’s hands, or use the ol’ shot to the ankle to make the crazy old guy
submit, never happens. No, Mr. Wood received no warning, he lay dead with 9 shots fired at
his center where the organs vital to life sat in his chest, an assured kill to stop the threat. Like
most families of those that do not understand the protocol and have watched too many police
dramas, Mr. Wood’s brother was outraged and shocked.
Four minutes from call to execution? I mean that’s a little quick” said Michael Allen, Vincent’s brother. “They couldn’t wait for the guy to get there to talk him down so to speak?, said Allen, “you don’t have to go for the kill shot every time, it’s ludicrous.”
There has been no disciplinary action in the Wood case, nor was there any action taken against the two officers involved in the Mhai Scott killing, A two month-long investigation by the Louden County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office found the officers acted appropriately in a decision released last week. The decision was a reiteration of the response offered by the Sterling Virginia police chief on the day of the shooting. An interview with Ms. Scott’s mother in the Philippines revealed that Mhai was concerned about “teasing” from the staff at Costco and had feared for her safety while at work. A concerning comment as this establishes that there was tension between Mhai and some of the staff employed by Costco. Her mother called the actions of the police “brutal” and wondered why her daughter was not subdued rather than killed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doxsPMPPc-8). Ms. Scott needed someone to intervene and offer mediation and de-escalation but, per the shoot to stop protocol, she received a rush to justice and five bullets to her chest.
We have employed the use of law enforcement to keep us safe from the bad guys, the criminal
element, those that make us feel unsafe. From an officer’s perspective, it is either them or us, so the decision to employ lethal force seems rational and acceptable, though unfortunate. But, were either Mhai or Vincent, both free of any prior criminal conviction, the bad guys? Were they criminals? It seems that the commonality was their mental state on the day of their shootings. While certainly this made the task of controlling their behavior more difficult, it appears that there may have been negligence on the part of the officers to assess the situations, to determine the level of the threat relative to their ability to use means other than deadly force. And it seems, based on the short amount of time for the decision to be made to engage in deadly force, in both cases, that there was little if any room for error or hesitation for the targets to respond to officer demands.
If the producers of Law and Order SVU were to depict a reality-based scene rather than one that offers a more honorable and compassionate yet fictitious view, Detective Benson would not have repeatedly screamed out warnings, she would not have hesitated to aim and shoot at the assailant’s center, to aim center mass for the kill, to fire as many shots needed to stop the threat. The officer would have fired without hesitation even if the suspect was not carrying a gun but instead, a knife or a scissor. All law enforcement officers engage and no one is exempt, when a threat is perceived, shoot to stop is the protocol.
lydiakelemen 