Blue on Blue

by Charles Campisi

  If the perp chooses Option 2 and runs into the tunnel, that’s still manageable. We’ll get the Transit guys to shut off the power and divert the trains—hopefully before the perp gets fried or squashed—and then send ESU in to get him.

  But if this guy chooses Option 3, if he charges at us with the knife, there’s going to be trouble.

  Because for us, Option 3 is not an option. This guy has already stabbed one person, possibly fatally, and if he makes a move toward us with the knife, if he tries to close the fifteen-foot gap that separates us, which will take him less than a second, he’s an imminent threat to me and my partner, and we will have to stop him.

  Here’s how we’re not—repeat, not—going to stop him.

  If he has that knife in a stabbing or slashing position, we’re not going to tackle him or use some fancy jujitsu moves to get the knife out of his hand. We’re not trained for that, we’re not Jackie Chan, and even if we were, in a close quarters struggle there’s still a good chance that with that knife waving around one or both of us is going to get slashed or stabbed. Yes, we’re both wearing soft body armor under our shirts, which offers some protection, but Kevlar is designed to stop bullets, not knives; under the right circumstances, a knife can penetrate it. And besides, the vest only covers the torso, which means a lot of our important parts—really important parts—are unprotected.

  We’re probably not going to use a baton if he charges at us, either. I left mine in the car, and even though Rodney has his, we’re probably not going to let the guy get close enough for Rodney to try to hit him with it. We’re not going to spray him with Mace. By the time the charging perp gets close enough for us to use it, even assuming we can hit him directly in the face, it most likely won’t even slow down his momentum, much less stop him; it might only make him madder. (Mace, which is essentially tear gas, was later replaced by OC, oleoresin capsicum, or pepper spray.) We’re not going to Taser him, because at the time Taser guns have hardly even been invented yet—and even if we time-traveled the incident ahead a couple of decades, we probably still wouldn’t have Tasers. Because of concerns about their potential lethality—unfounded concerns, in my opinion—in 2014 the NYPD only had about six hundred Tasers, and they were only issued to specialized units like ESU and to some patrol sergeants and lieutenants.

  So no, if the perp with the knife charges us, and we believe we have no other reasonable option, we’re not going to wrestle him or club him or spray him or Taser him.

  We’re going to shoot him.

  We’re not going to fire warning shots—that is specifically prohibited by NYPD regulations. We’re not going to try to shoot him in the leg, or the arm; Lord knows we aren’t going to try to shoot the knife out of his hand. That only happens in movies—bad movies. Instead, following our training and Department policy, we’re going to aim for the center of his chest, his “center mass,” and we’re going to shoot. If he still keeps coming we’re going shoot again and then again, until he no longer poses a deadly threat or until our revolvers are empty and the hammers go “click”—and even then, if somehow he still poses a deadly threat, and there’s no other way to stop that threat, and if we have time, we’re going to reload and shoot some more. We’re not “shooting to kill”; NYPD policy is “shoot to stop.” But if the only thing that stops the threat is this guy dying, that’s what’s going to happen. I know that sounds cold, even brutal, to a lot of civilians, but that’s the reality.

  But I don’t want that to happen. Please don’t make me have to shoot this guy. For a lot of reasons.

  One is that I have a natural aversion to putting a bullet into another human being. A lot of people might not believe it, but just about every cop feels the same way. There may be a few exceptions, like Officer Romeo, that cop in the Seven-Three who almost shot the teenaged burglary suspect in the back, but they really are the exceptions. More than 90 percent of NYPD cops will never fire their weapons at another person during their entire careers—and they’re glad of it.

  Another reason that I don’t want to shoot this perp is that I know if I start shooting, some of my shots are almost certainly going to miss.

  I’m a good shot. I routinely shoot a 100 percent on my semiannual firearm requalification tests at the NYPD firing range at Rodman’s Neck in the Bronx, which means I put fifty out of fifty shots into the critical area of a stationary paper human silhouette target at distances of seven, fifteen, and twenty-five yards. I also do well on the FATS machine (Firearms and Tactics Simulator), which has officers respond to amazingly realistic “shoot/don’t shoot” video screen scenarios by shooting wax “bullets.” (Later they switched to laser guns.)

  But I’ve read the annual NYPD Firearms Discharge Reports, which track every bullet fired by NYPD officers each year. I’ve seen the statistics. So I know that on average, year in, year out, only about one in three of the bullets fired by officers at a perpetrator will hit him; about two-thirds of the rounds fired will miss the perp completely. At close range, zero to seven yards, the averages go up a little, to about 40 percent hits, which still means 60 percent misses. It doesn’t mean that NYPD officers are bad shots; the numbers are consistent with or better than national averages. It just illustrates how hard it is to hit a small target with a handgun, in the heat of the moment, and especially if that target is moving.

  And for me, standing on the subway platform, any bullets I fire that don’t hit the perp are going to hit something else—a steel support column, the concrete floor, the tile-covered walls, something. Those bullets are traveling at about a thousand feet per second, and there’s a good chance they could ricochet, or fragment into little pieces of lead and copper that could go zinging every which way, including our way. It’s certainly something to think about.

  And there’s another good reason why I don’t want to shoot this guy. It’s because I know that the instant I pull that trigger, my life is going to change.

  After the shooting, my gun—and Rodney’s, too, if he shoots—will be impounded and I’ll be placed on administrative duty, meaning I can’t go out on the street for at least several days, until a preliminary investigation is completed—and longer if there are questions about the shooting. The trajectory of every round I fire will be tracked and analyzed. My tactics will be reviewed and second-guessed at the highest levels of the police department. Not only will I have to show that I had no choice but to shoot, I’ll also have to prove that I didn’t unnecessarily put myself in a position in which shooting was the last resort.

  Because I’m a DI, I’ll probably get even more scrutiny than an average cop, not less; as a supervisor, I may also be held accountable for Rodney’s tactics. I’ll probably have to report to a shrink in the Department’s Psychological Services Unit to have my mental health evaluated. And since it’s not every day that a deputy inspector shoots somebody—it’s not even every year—it will probably get big play in the papers: “NYPD COMMANDER SHOOTS MAN IN SUBWAY.” Maybe the reporters will get it right, maybe they won’t.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m confident that our tactics are by the book, and that if we have to shoot it will be justified. But you never know. It could be that a “witness” will magically appear and claim that we cold-bloodedly shot the guy after he dropped the knife. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened. Or maybe the perp will turn out to be the son of some politician or VIP, who’ll tell the press that his boy was a really nice guy as long as he took his meds, and then demand to know why the cops had to kill him, why they didn’t just shoot the knife out of his hand. It’s not likely any of that will happen, but it’s possible.

  So the bottom line is that I’ve got only one good reason to shoot this guy—he poses an imminent threat of death or serious injury to me or another person—and about a million good reasons not to.

  And in the end, thank God, I don’t have to.

  After a few more rounds of DROP THE KNIFE! DROP THE KNIFE! Rodney senses an opportunity. He calls out to me, You got me, boss?—meaning
do I have him covered, and I nod to him. Rodney holsters his gun, takes a step away from the wall, and takes a two-handed grip on his baton, holding it over his shoulder like an MLB slugger getting ready to crush one out of Yankee Stadium. Then he says to the perp, in a low voice, full of menace: For the last time, buddy, drop the fucking knife!

  It’s mostly a bluff. I don’t think Rodney will really wade in and hit the guy; for the reasons mentioned above, you don’t take a stick to a knife fight. But Rodney is a big guy, six feet, intimidating, with biceps bulging out of his short-sleeved summer uniform shirt. The perp is probably imagining how much it’s going to hurt when that stick meets his humerus. Still snarling and growling, he throws the knife on the floor and it skitters away.

  So now the perp is an unarmed suspect, and we can treat him as one. I holster my gun and Rodney and I both rush him. We spin him around and throw him against the wall, then search him and cuff him. It’s over. The standoff on the platform has lasted less than a minute, but it feels like an hour. I can feel the adrenaline draining out of my body, my heart rate slowing; an intense sense of relief washes over me.

  Thank you, Lord. I didn’t have to shoot this guy.

  It turns out that the man he stabbed survived—apparently they were having some sort of lovers’ quarrel—and eventually the perp will go down for attempted murder. Back at the precinct, Rodney takes the collar and starts processing him into the system, while I find another partner/driver and head back out on patrol.

  Of course, that wasn’t the only time I ever had to draw my gun on the job—although I’m pleased to say that during my almost forty-one-year police career I never had to shoot anyone.

  But maybe it gives you some idea of what it’s like for cops who find themselves in a potential shooting situation: the fear, the adrenaline, the terrible uncertainty, the inevitable repercussions.

  And maybe it also helps you understand what every good cop knows: Those guns we carry are double-ended weapons.

  They can kill and maim at one end.

  And they can ruin a career, and even a life, at the other.

  * * *

  The most surprising thing about police shootings is not how often they happen, but how often they don’t—especially in the NYPD.

  As I said, the NYPD gathers detailed statistics on all shooting incidents involving NYPD officers, and assembles them every year in the annual Firearms Discharge Report. The report details how many shots were fired, how many officers fired them, how many civilians were killed or wounded, how many officers were killed or wounded, the rank, years of service, gender, and race of the officers involved, the race or ethnicity of the civilians involved—it goes on and on. The report is public. Anybody can take a look at it.

  In 2013, my last full year on the job, the report listed 81 incidents in which NYPD officers fired their guns. Ninety-eight on-duty and off-duty officers were involved in those incidents, and a total of 248 shots were fired. Of those 81 incidents, 19 involved animals shot while attacking officers or civilians, all of them dogs, almost all of them pit bulls. (It’s not always vicious dogs, though. In 1999, for example, cops shot and killed a rampaging bull named Roughrider that had escaped from an illegal parking lot rodeo in Queens. That’s right, a rodeo in Queens.) Another 8 of those 81 shooting incidents were suicides or attempted suicides by cops, and 12 were “unintentional discharges”—the gun went off because of improper handling, or in a struggle with a suspect, or when a cop’s gun hand got caught in a door during a search warrant. Two shooting incidents were “unauthorized use of a firearm”—one of them a cop shooting into the air, another an EDP who grabbed a cop’s gun and shot him in the foot, and so on.

  So that leaves 40 incidents in which NYPD cops intentionally fired their weapons at suspects in 2013—the Department calls them ID-ACs, or Intentional Discharge–Adversarial Conflicts. Fifty-five cops were involved in those shootings, and altogether they fired 162 rounds. During those incidents, two cops were shot and wounded; neither was killed. Two civilian bystanders, both women, were slightly wounded when cops opened fire at an EDP near Times Square. Meanwhile, 17 “subjects” were intentionally shot and wounded, and 8 were shot and killed.

  Let me repeat that: In a city of 8.4 million people, in a Department of 36,000 armed cops, a Department that made about 400,000 arrests that year, including 5,000 gun arrests, NYPD officers shot and killed 8 people in 2013—all males, all of whom were carrying guns or knives, 7 of whom had serious criminal histories and one who had a history of violent psychiatric problems.

  Yes, that’s 8 dead people short of perfect. The NYPD would have been happier if those 8 suspects had wound up in prison or a psych ward instead of dead on the street. But keep the shooting numbers in perspective. In that same year that NYPD cops intentionally shot and killed or wounded 25 people, almost 1,300 civilians in New York City were shot and killed or wounded by people who were not cops.

  The point is that anybody who claims that trigger-happy cops are the biggest danger to the people of New York City simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. More people are killed by errant cabdrivers in New York City every year than are killed by NYPD cops—and the people killed by cabdrivers are innocent people minding their own business, not dangerous perps with guns or knives.

  And compare the recent cop shooting numbers to the way it used to be. In 1973, when I came on the job, there were 118 people shot and wounded by NYPD officers, and 58 people shot and killed—seven times more people killed by cops than there were four decades later. In that same year, 7 NYPD cops were shot and killed.

  That’s partly because New York was simply a much more violent place back then, with almost 1,700 homicides and other violent crime rates to match. (In 2013, homicides had fallen to 335, a historic low.) More violent crime inevitably means more police shootings.

  But the NYPD also made a number of changes in policy, training, equipment, and attitude over that forty-year period that I believe have helped drastically reduce officer-involved shootings.

  For example, until the early 1970s NYPD cops were allowed to shoot at suspects fleeing from a violent felony—a robbery, a rape—even if they shot him in the back. That was changed to allow cops to shoot only if the suspect posed a clear and imminent threat to themselves or another person. (An exception to that policy, one that became known as the so-called Son of Sam rule after the famous serial killer, allowed cops to shoot a fleeing suspect if he was a known killer, there was reason to believe that he was armed, and there was a high probability that he would kill someone else. But even then, the cop better be damned sure he’s got the right guy.)

  Firearms training also improved over those forty years. When I was at the Academy we got just enough firearms training to pass the qualification on the stationary paper target range; they hardly even taught us how to clean our weapons. Later they started giving recruits more realistic shoot/don’t shoot training, including sessions at the “Haunted House,” in which range instructors acted out various scenarios—suspicious person with his hand in his pocket in a dark hallway, innocent bystander suddenly opening a door behind you, and so on—and the recruit had to make an instant decision on whether to shoot. That training improved with the introduction of the FATS machine and the “Tactical Village,” a mock city street that allowed instruction in real-life situations. Unfortunately, because of limited facilities, most recruits and cops don’t get nearly enough time on the simulators or other realistic firearms training.

  NYPD nonlethal or less-lethal equipment like OC spray and Tasers have also helped reduce police shootings—although as I said, the NYPD has been reluctant to deploy Tasers very widely.

  But in addition to all that, over the past decades I believe there has been a dramatic shift in the way NYPD cops on the street think about police shootings. Cops know that the Department is going to give a police shooting much more scrutiny than it might have gotten in the old days. Even the simplest officer shooting investigation—say, a gun is accidentally
fired in a precinct locker room, no one injured—will eat up hundreds of man-hours; a complicated or controversial one will consume thousands. A shooting investigation can take months, or even years if there’s a potential criminal or civil case, during which the officer will be locked in a legal and professional limbo. And even if the investigation determines the shooting was justified, cops also know that in today’s social and political climate, that shooting can still get them seriously jammed up.

  In any shooting incident involving an NYPD cop, on-duty or off-duty, a supervisor goes to the scene, impounds the fired weapon, and secures the scene. If anyone has been injured or killed, or if the shooting looks problematic, Internal Affairs is notified, and investigators from the IAB’s Force Group go to the scene. (IAB investigators in the Force Group, also known as Group 54, are specially trained in weapons, ballistics, police use-of-force laws, and other investigation techniques.) They’ll work with investigators from a Borough Shooting Team to collect evidence, interview witnesses, and prepare a preliminary report to be presented to the police commissioner, usually within twenty-four hours or less; ballistics tests and toxicological and medical reports take longer. The local DA’s office will also conduct its own investigation, with our help, to determine whether to file criminal charges against the officer; if there’s a criminal case, we’ll hold off on our final report until the case is over. If the DA declines the case, or a grand jury refuses to indict, a final report will be reviewed by both a Borough Firearms Discharge Advisory Board and the chief of department’s Firearms Discharge Review Board, an ad hoc group of senior supervisors that will make a recommendation on the shooting and what disciplinary steps to take, if any, against the officer. The police commissioner makes the final decision.