Split-second ‘shoot-or-don't shoot’ decisions

Bank Scenario #2:

Bank Manager: Officer, officer over here.

Taibbi: You in the gray sweater.

Suspect: What’s the problem?

Taibbi: Police. Show your hands.

Suspect fires and charges. Taibbi ducks, then takes cover behind the pillar. gun battle ensues.

Again, things move almost too fast to comprehend.

At least the second time, I didn’t bother with the bank manager this time. And although the suspect and I each received non-fatal wounds, I was able to stay in the fight this time by focusing only on the threat.

Williams: And you reacted to that?

Taibbi: Yeah, maybe not fast enough, but I did react to it.

Reacting to a perceived deadly threat is essential to understanding why the five cops fired at Sean Bell and his friends, police say.

In a preliminary report, each of the undercover cops claimed that he feared imminent danger to either himself or his fellow officers. They all say they reacted to a gun that, it turns out, was never found and, Sean Bell’s friends say, never existed.

The perception of a gun, it turns out, can play a big part in pretend policework too.

Williams: Start scenario!

Bank Manager: Officer.

Taibbi: Both of you in the corner. Police. Police. Hands up. Hands up.

Suspect: What’s the problem?

Suspect rushes Taibbi with hands up.

Okay, I fired at the suspect from a few feet away but it’s the bank manager who’s grimacing... because my shot hit him in the stomach.

And it turned out the suspect wasn’t brandishing a gun in his raised hand, but a black glove.   So about my use of deadly force?

Williams: That would have been a situation where you wouldn’t have wanted to shoot.

Taibbi: I thought he was threatening my life.

Williams: Well, there you go.

Taibbi: I would have lost that one though.  I mean, there would be a lawsuit after that one.

Williams: Will the defendant please rise.

Remember, soap powder bullets, no actual danger and everyone gets to walk away safe. Still, in only a day of this training it was plain to see how hard these split-second decisions can be, how narrow your vision is, and how you literally don’t hear or remember what you or anyone else might have shouted.

bAuditory exclusion, alright?  Something that we’ve learned from combat.  People in combat tend to not hear things, right?

In the Sean Bell case, conditions were far from ideal. It was dark when the undercover detective, in plain clothes, tried to stop Bell’s car. And remember, although he reportedly identified himself as a cop, what could Bell or the others in his car really see or hear?

Besides the black of night, Bell’s friends said later they feared for their lives. All they knew in the confusion of the moment was that there was a man brandishing a gun coming at them for no apparent reason.

Could both sides have been right in believing they were reacting to a deadly threat?

And, from my own brief experience on bank patrol, was I right when I made what turned out to be a wrong decision and shot at the unarmed suspect?

Taibbi: I saw him turn toward me with something that I thought was a weapon. It’s not, it’s a glove. What should I have done at that point?

Williams: There’s no what "you should have done." You perceived that that was a gun. So in your mind, you did what you thought was right. You shot that person before they had a chance to shoot you.

Taibbi: And yet, as we’ve seen from the decisions and court cases in the past, a cop just can’t say, “I thought it was a gun.  I thought my life was in danger.”  That doesn’t automatically get him off the hook.

Williams: It will probably never. It will probably never work.

What does work, at least to a point, is this live action scenario-based training.  Even for an old rookie... and even in less than a full day of it, I got better.

I recognized the need to find cover, and in this case of hostage-taking, holding my fire until I know the hostage is safe, and then firing my weapon only when I know the bad guy is a real and imminent threat.

Taibbi: This training has really evolved.  I mean, in the old days, “Stop or I’ll shoot,” that doesn’t work anymore.

Williams: That doesn’t work anymore. There’s no more warning shots. We need realistic training. There’s no substitute for this training.

But real cops don’t get second-chances in the situations they face on the job, and when they make mistakes real lives can be ruined.

And what about the five veteran New York City cops in the Sean Bell shooting? Ironically, in all their years on the force, none had ever fired his weapon in the line of duty before.

Not one of them, not once.

But that no longer matters. Their legacy is bound to be those 50 shots and the death of an unarmed 23-year-old on his wedding day.

Taibbi: You know that these guys are going to be thinking about it for the rest of their lives.

William Bell: They should. They should. ‘Cause I am. I’m hurting for the rest of my life.

Three of the five officers have been indicted: two were charged with first degree manslaughter and one was charged with reckless endangerment. All three officers have pleaded not guilty. No charges have been filed against the strip club where Sean Bell held his bachelor party.

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