Introduction

Yup, let’s jump right in. For this episode, everything will refer to fatal officer involved shootings.

All too many people and most of the media are acting as judge and jury, working to deepen our national divide for their benefit. Where are the people, where are the media, who seek the truth, believe in the basic rules of jurisprudence, including due process, and are willing to put the pursuit of truth over personal, party and identity group agendas?

That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.

Continuing

There is a lot of appropriate attention being paid to the people who have been shot, as well as their families. There is shock, grieving, anger, a powerful sense of loss, and many more emotions in every shooting. The well known five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, clearly start with denial and anger. 

I am guessing that the stages of grief are the same whether someone is shot in a gang war, or shot by law enforcement. I have to guess because gang war killings, though they dramatically exceed officer involved killings, are ignored by the national press. Is that because no one would care, because no one would buy a paper, watch a TV show or listen to a talk show where dealing with individual gang killings was the topic? Or because reporting on individual gang war killings would not advance certain agendas?

We do hear a lot, as we should, about the people who were killed, and what the killing did to their families, friends and communities. Let’s talk about the person with the badge, the firearm and the responsibility.

Most officer-involved killings involved clear or potential life-and-death decisions, unfolding in seconds or fractions of a second, all while waves of adrenalin are flowing. Many professions, especially those where vital decisions need to be made instantly, allow for development time with even the most promising professional newcomers. Many of us have heard about the most prized rookie quarterbacks in the NFL that, “The professional game is so much faster, things come at you so quickly. When he adjusts to that, he will be a great QB.” The same thing is true about surgeons with little experience. The patient’s life is often in their hands, and they are broken in gently, little by little, procedure by procedure, so they can get over the almost disabling nervousness would overcome anyone when they first hold a bearing human heart in their hands. 

NFL QBs and surgeons get to practice, to find their sea legs, if you will, in very real situations. And that’s how they learn to handle events that would have panicked them earlier in their careers. Cops can train, and well they should. And often. But there is no way they can train in real life and death situations. Only personal experience can help here. Quarterbacks play every week in the season, frequently in situations where the play has collapsed and they are trying to escape without being destroyed by a defensive player who is being paid to do exactly that. The great ones not only escape, but create a big play at the same time. All that in seconds. No time to think. Training and experience are the keys. Surgeons can be in the operating room more than once a week, learning as they are allowed to do more and more with the anesthetized patients lying on the table in front of them.

Most cops will never fire their weapons, and a majority will never even draw them in anger. Yet we expect that somehow they will be able to handle themselves so perfectly that their actions will survive both leisurely and detailed 20-20 hindsight, and the wild ignorance on the part of those indulging in the hindsight analysis. We expect them to be able to process volumes of information, sort it all out, decide on the best plan then act on it. Often in the blink of an eye,