Into the Kill Zone

by David Klinger

  A major reason why it is hard for people who have not served in law enforcement to understand the immense responsibility that comes from carrying a gun is that there is a dearth of information about how officers actually think and feel about deadly force. This book seeks to at least partially remedy this by presenting a cop’s eye view of the role deadly force plays in the lives of American police officers—from before they come on the job to the aftermath of shootings.

  The first chapter deals with officers’ expectations about the use of deadly force before they came on the job. The second chapter addresses officers’ experiences during academy and field training and how these experiences shaped their attitudes about using deadly force. The third chapter focuses on cases in which officers hold their fire when shooting would have been legally permissible. The fourth chapter is devoted to shootings. And the final chapter depicts what occurs in the wake of shootings and how involvement in shootings affects officers who pull the trigger.

  Each chapter consists of collections of stories that are presented in the words of the officers who told them to me. The stories, which vary in length from a single paragraph to several pages, were selected because they provide a set of accounts that represent the major themes that emerged during my research. The stories are presented in the officers’ own words, but they do contain some modifications that enhance clarity and narrative structure.

  In order to reduce the likelihood that some readers might be able to divine the identity of an officer from a given story, I typically changed the dates, the names of the involved officers, the locations, and other identifying information. The only exceptions are when changing potentially identifying information would substantially alter a major aspect of what occurred and the officers in question explicitly told me that they did not mind if some potentially identifying details remained.

  The stories recounted in the pages that follow are as accurate and complete as I could make them. Nonetheless they do not convey everything the officers told me, for written words simply cannot express everything that people say when they talk. As is the case with all human speech, a decent bit of what officers conveyed about their experiences came through other modes of communication. Officers commonly punctuated their presentations with extreme animation: emotions surfaced and sometimes spilled over, as they used posture, gestures, tone of voice, facial expressions, and other means to help convey the anger, hatred, sadness, shock, fear, frustration, and other sentiments they felt before, during, and after their shootings. Tears welled up in—and occasionally spilled out of—some of the officers’ eyes as they recounted particularly horrific aspects of a shooting or some aspect of its aftermath. Other officers visibly seethed with vitriol as they described the disdain they felt for specific individuals, including the suspects they shot, the suspects’ lawyers, and members of the press. And some officers became still, subdued, and quiet as they told certain parts of their stories.

  When turning the interviews into written narratives there is, unfortunately, no way to represent all of the various verbal intonations, tears, postures, gesticulations, averted gazes, and so on that framed officers’ words without detracting substantially from the flow of their stories. I did all that I could to capture as much as possible of what officers were thinking and feeling by asking detailed questions and follow-ups that sought to get the officers to express with words as clearly and completely as possible what they were communicating through other means. These efforts yielded rich, detailed narratives that convey a tremendous amount of what the officers expressed.

  At this point, it is worthwhile to note that a good deal of sociological, psychological, and legal research has established that people who are involved in or witness the same event often have different impressions of what transpired. This phenomenon (often referred to as the Rashomon effect, after Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon, which presents four individuals’ accounts of a rape-murder) indicates that what the officers told me about the shootings in which they were involved does not represent the complete story of the incidents they related, but rather the story from their point of view. Others who experienced the events would have told different stories. A different book might have included these stories, but the purpose of this book is to present officers’ accounts of their shootings: what they saw, what they heard, what they thought, what they did, how they felt. And so it does.

  In telling the stories of their shootings and other events, the officers I interviewed sometimes used technical terms and vernacular phrases and otherwise spoke in ways that could render understanding difficult for those lacking a background in law enforcement. Because the book uses officers’ own words to tell their stories, the pages that follow contain a good deal of “police talk.” To minimize any problem such language might present, I have included in the back of the book a Glossary, containing terms and phrases that readers can turn to for clarification when they encounter police idiom.

  The definition of one idiomatic phrase should not wait for the back of the book, however, because it appears in the title. Police officers (and members of the military) use the term kill zone to refer to locations where a person is vulnerable to being killed by hostile action. The term is most often used to describe space into which someone possessing a firearm can shoot—the street in front of a house containing a sniper, for example. But it is also used more generally to describe the space that individuals occupy when they are vulnerable to being killed by any sort of weapon, be it a gun, a knife, or a motor vehicle. In police work, then, officers are in the kill zone when they are in positions where they could be shot, stabbed, run over, or otherwise mortally injured by citizens. Because the stories that make up this book are officers’ accounts of how they prepared for, experienced, and dealt with the aftermath of spending time in the kill zone, they take the reader Into the Kill Zone.

  Notes

  1. Examples of research on officers’ reactions following shootings include “Post-Traumatic Stress: Study of Police Officers Involved in Shootings,” by John G. Stratton, David Parker, and John R. Snibbe, Psychological Reports 55 (1984): 127–131; “Patterns of PTSD Among Police Officers Following Shooting Incidents: A Two-Dimensional Model and Treatment Implications,” by Berthold P. R. Gersons, Journal of Traumatic Stress 2 (1989): 247–257; and “A Comparative Analysis of the Effects of Post-Shooting Trauma on the Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” by John Henry Campbell, unpublished doctoral dissertation (Department of Educational Administration, Michigan State University, 1992).

  2. Examples of the research on officers’ reactions during shootings include Deadly Force Encounters: What Cops Need to Know to Mentally and Physically Prepare for and Survive a Gunfight, by Alexis Artwohl and Loren W. Christensen (Boulder, Colo.: Paladin Press, 1997); and “A Comparative Analysis of the Effects of Post-Shooting Trauma on the Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” by John Henry Campbell, unpublished doctoral dissertation (Department of Educational Administration, Michigan State University, 1992).

  It should be noted here that police officers who are involved in shootings are not alone when it comes to experiencing unusual reactions during and after stressful events. Research has established that people involved in a wide variety of traumatic events—including combat, criminal victimization, and mass disasters—can experience the sorts of things that cops deal with during and after shootings. For a good overview of the research on how humans react to traumatic incidents, see Stress and Trauma, by Patricia A. Resick (Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis, 2001).

  3. Readers interested in learning more about the research project can do so by reading the final report that I submitted to the Department of Justice. This report can be accessed on the Internet via a link at www.killzonevoices.com.

  4. The basis for the psychological claim that humans are naturally both drawn to and repulsed by violence lies in Freud’s work on Eros and Thanatos. See, for example, Civilisation, War, and Death, by Sigmund Freud, edited by Jo
hn Rickman (London: Hogarth Press, 1968; originally published 1939). A more recent treatment of this line of thinking can be found in On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Killing in War and Society, by Dave Grossman (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995).

  5. For a general discussion of how the tension between order and liberty is manifest in the American criminal justice system, see The Limits of the Criminal Sanction, by Herbert Packer (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1968). Discussions of the issue where the police in particular are concerned can be found in The Functions of the Police in Modern Society, by Egon Bittner (Rockville, Md.: National Institute of Mental Health, 1970); and Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in a Democratic Society, 3rd ed., by Jerome Skolnick (Old Tappan, N.J.: Macmillan, 1994).

  6. A brief history of the riots in the early and mid-1960s can be found in the official report of the federal commission convened to investigate them—commonly called the Kerner Commission (after its chair, Otto Kerner, then governor of Illinois)—The Kerner Commission Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968).

  7. A succinct discussion of the historical tension between blacks and the police can be found in “The Evolving Strategy of Police: A Minority View,” in Perspectives on Policing, no. 13, by Hubert Williams and Patrick V. Murphy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1990). For a somewhat longer discussion of black-police tensions regarding the use of force in particular, see “The Color of Law and the Issue of Color: Race and the Abuse of Police Power,” by Hubert G. Locke, in William A. Geller and Hans Toch (eds.) Police Violence: Understanding and Controlling Police Abuse of Force (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996).

  8. On black involvement in police shootings, see, for example, Policing and Homicide, 1976–1998: Justifiable Homicide by Police, Police Officers Murdered by Felons, by Jody M. Brown and Patrick A. Langdon (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 180987, 2001); A Balance of Forces, by Kenneth J. Matulia (Gaithersberg, Md.: International Association of Chiefs of Police, 1982); and Deadly Force: What We Know, by William A. Geller and Michael S. Scott (Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum, 1992).

  9. On differential black involvement in crime, including as victims, see, for example, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, by William Julius Wilson (New York: Knopf, 1996) and The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America (3rd ed.), by Samuel Walker, Cassia Sphon, and Miriam DeLone (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2004).

  On racial disparities in police shootings being comparable to disparities in serious crime, see Police Use of Deadly Force, by Catherine H. Milton, Jeanne W. Halleck, James Lardner, and Gary L. Albrecht (Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation, 1977); Use of Deadly Force by Police Officers: Final Report, by Arnold Binder, Peter Scharf, and Raymond Galvin (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, 1982); “Race and Extreme Police-Citizen Violence,” by James J. Fyfe, in R. L. McNeely and Carl E. Pope (eds.) Race, Crime, and Criminal Justice (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1981); and Deadly Force: What We Know, by William A. Geller and Michael S. Scott (Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum, 1992).

  10. See “Four Miami Police Officers Convicted of Conspiracy in Shootings,” New York Times, Apr. 10, 2003, p. A18; and “The Rampart Scandal: LAPD Probe Fades into Oblivion,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 11, 2003, main news, part 1, p. 1.

  11. The FBI tracks fatal police shootings through a program known as the Supplemental Homicide Reports (SHR), but the SHR records of fatal shootings are incomplete because police departments are not required to report to the FBI when their officers kill someone. Nobody keeps any sort of official national count of nonfatal shootings. See Policing and Homicide: 1976–1998: Justifiable Homicide by Police, Police Officers Murdered by Felons, by Jody M. Brown and Patrick A. Langdon (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 180987, 2001) for an overview of the SHR program as it relates to police shootings. See “Too Many Missing Cases: Holes in Our Knowledge About Police Use of Force,” by James J. Fyfe, Justice Research and Policy 4 (2002): 87–102, for a critique of the SHR program and a call for better data collection on police shootings.

  12. The estimate of a thousand fatal shootings can be found in “Police Use of Deadly Force: Research and Reform,” by James J. Fyfe, Justice Quarterly 5 (1988): 165–205. The lower estimate comes from Crime File Deadly Force: A Study Guide, by William A. Geller (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 1986).

  13. The data on NYPD shootings can be found on p. 94 of “Too Many Missing Cases: Holes in Our Knowledge About Police Use of Force,” by James J. Fyfe, Justice Research and Policy 4 (2002): 87–102.

  14. Information on attacks on police officers comes from “Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted,” 2000, which is developed from data collected by the FBI as part of their Uniform Crime Reports Program. This publication can be located by clicking on the Library and Reference section of the FBI’s Web page at www.fbi.gov.

  Chapter One

  Choosing the Badge and Gun

  Men and women become police officers for many reasons. For some, police work is the realization of a childhood dream born of playing cops and robbers or family tradition. Others become officers because they wish to help people in need, protect innocents from evil, or render justice. I, for example, had a grand plan to save South Central Los Angeles from the persistent gang violence and other crime that had turned the area into a virtual war zone during the 1970s. Less romantic motives for becoming a police officer also abound, as considerations such as the desire for a steady job with benefits, a wish to avoid the drudgery of more traditional occupations, and simple happenstance lead many people into law enforcement. Whatever draws them into police work, most officers come to find that the job they have is quite different from the one they had envisioned. The fact is that most Americans’ image of policing comes primarily from popular myths derived from media depictions of police work, which, as noted in the Introduction, provide at best shallow and at worst wildly inaccurate portrayals of the job.

  Before coming on the job, most police officers are not aware that shootings are a rare occurrence. Prior to being hired, most officers are just ordinary folk, whose impressions of police work are shaped by the same media forces that frame those of any other member of the general public. So unless a future officer happens to have learned that shootings are rare events from a source such as a friend or family member already in law enforcement, he or she will likely share the general public’s misperception that police officers shoot people on a regular basis.

  Although their impressions of the odds that they will end up shooting someone may differ, all would-be officers know that firearms are a tool of the police trade and that there is some possibility that they might one day find themselves in a situation that calls for them to pull the trigger. The fact that being a police officer means that one might be called upon to shoot—and perhaps kill—another human being raises an important question for all who seek the job: Will they be able to do it?

  Rooted in the biblical admonition “Thou shalt not kill,” our American systems of law and civic morality stress the sanctity of human life and condemn the act of taking it. Even though our laws and morals have always provided for killing under certain circumstances—during war and in self-defense, for example—such provisions are narrow exceptions to the sweeping norm that we should not take the life of our fellow human beings. This powerful norm is not so easily overcome. Indeed some have argued that the norm reflects an innate human aversion to killing and, consequently, that police officers—like soldiers and anyone else whose job description includes the prospect of the destruction of fellow humans—must actually be taught to overcome their natural predisposition against shedding blood in order for them to take a life.1

  Whatever its source, the sense that one should not kill is strong amo
ng Americans, and it can get in the way of doing one’s job if one is a police officer. Men and women contemplating careers in law enforcement deal with the fact that the ability to kill is a job requirement in a variety of ways. Some think long and hard about whether they can take a life. I certainly did, spending countless hours reflecting on the issue and discussing the morality of killing with friends, family, professors, pastors, and police officers who shared my religious faith. Other would-be officers resolve the question in short order, and some don’t really ponder it at all.

  None of the officers I interviewed engaged in the degree of preemployment soul searching that I had, but some—such as the former theology student who took a police job after dropping out of seminary—came close. Several of the men and women that I spoke with had quickly put to rest the question about their ability to kill—some almost as soon it came up in their minds—and the majority never really contemplated the question as they were considering police careers. In fact, the only time many of these officers ever thought about the question was when it was put to them during their job interviews. Law enforcement agencies are keenly aware that some people are not capable of killing, so they try to avoid hiring such people. One way they do this is by asking applicants some variant of this simple question: “Do you believe that you could kill someone if you had to?”

  Obviously, each of the eighty men and women who spoke with me had answered this question affirmatively. In this chapter we meet twenty-seven of them. Their stories were selected for two related reasons. The first is that the ways they dealt with the question of killing people before they came on the job cover the spectrum of how the officers that I interviewed approached the issue. The second is that the paths these officers took to police work are representative of those taken by the larger group. As a result, the stories in this chapter give the reader some idea of the types of journeys that people who aspire to law enforcement careers undertake on their way to an occupation where the job requirements include the ability to kill people.