So I told her, “I shot this guy in the head; he’s probably gonna die.”
And she goes, “Well, what’s gonna happen next?”
I replied, “Well, you know, I’ll probably be home late, but they’re gonna give me five days off for it,” the standard five-day administrative leave.
My wife, the understanding individual she is, said, “Oh, good, I’ll have a list of stuff for you to do.” Now my lieutenant was standing right behind me when I was talking to my wife, so I turned around and told him what she had just said. He about wet his pants laughing.
• • •
I fired as the guy swung his gun toward me. I knew I hit him because I saw him flinch as I was firing. He flinched up and back. With my experience hunting, I know that that’s what happens when something—an animal or whatever—has been hit by a bullet. So when I saw that flinch, I knew that I had hit him. Then he took off down the stairway where the shooting took place and made it outside where some other officers caught him. The second robber got away, so I went downstairs to where the suspect I shot was. He was lying on the ground in handcuffs. I asked the guy who was watching the suspect, “Is he OK?” He said, “No, he’s been hit.” I reached down, pulled the suspect’s shirt back, and saw that there was a hole in his right side. It wasn’t anything like you would picture; it was just a small hole with no exit. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had also shot him in the leg and in the back. All I saw was the hole in his side.
After that point, it kind of started cycling through my head that my wife was seven months pregnant with our first child. That got to me. I knelt down, and I got beside the suspect, and I told him, “You and that other son of a bitch aren’t going to keep me from seeing my child. You’re lucky to be alive.” I was angry at this guy for coming at me with a gun. What if he would have shot me, and I never would have seen my child, never would have seen my wife again? I was pissed.
After that discussion, I realized that the other guy was still on the loose, so I went to help look for him. I was helping the other guys look for about ten or fifteen minutes, when I realized, “Shit, I was just in a shooting. I need to call somebody.” So I quit looking for the second suspect and called my wife. I explained everything to her, basically told her that I was involved in a shooting and that I was OK. The next thing I did was call my attorney and basically explained to him what happened.
As I was waiting for my attorney and the investigators to show up, I went through a stage of anger because of what this guy did. He would have shot me if I hadn’t shot him first, so I was thinking about my kid. I was determined to see my family, but I was also angry that he put himself in this predicament. I thought, “What about his family?” Here he doesn’t think about himself, but what about his family that’s got to go through all this stuff? So I started thinking about that, but then I came to the conclusion that I should forget about that. If the table had been turned and he shot me and got away, would this guy be thinking about my family the way I was thinking about his?
I really didn’t think so. Especially now, knowing what I know about his extensive criminal background, I don’t think that he would have. I guess maybe I had those thoughts because my religious faith made me more concerned about the other people involved. On top of all that, I was also pissed at this guy for making me shoot him. I could have gone through my whole career without having to shoot somebody, and that would have been great. But I didn’t have any other recourse but to shoot him.
The emotions really hit me when I was done giving my statement and I went home to my wife. Just seeing her pregnant with my child, I broke down and cried. We discussed the situation and what happened and that I was pissed. Even at that time, I was still pissed that that guy had placed me in this situation. What in the hell over? Freaking money? He was willing to lose his life over that money and risk the things that that would do to his family? We talked about all that. I ran the whole situation down with my wife, told her everything about it and what I was feeling. Later that day, I talked about the shooting with friends on the PD. After that, I didn’t experience anything like waking up in the middle of the night, crying, or being real depressed. Nothing like that. So I guess I just felt better after getting the story out to my wife and my friends. It helped me out.
• • •
Right after the shooting, my wife was worried about me. She was wondering how it was gonna affect me. Matter of fact, she told me about a year after it happened that I really changed, but she never would tell me how or why. I know that I did to a point, but I don’t know to what extent, and she never would tell me. Still, to this day, nine years later, she won’t tell me, and we’ve been married for seventeen years.
• • •
I got in two shootings within five months of each other my first year on the job, and my family started to worry about me. In fact, my mom’s younger sister to this day is just deathly afraid of me being a policeman. She just goes nuts whenever we talk about my job. She doesn’t want me hurt. She and I are about probably twelve or thirteen years apart. We’re the closest kids in age in my entire family, so as we grew up, I was almost her younger brother rather than her nephew, and she just didn’t want to see her nephew go through that stuff. And then my mom and my grandma would say stuff like, “Oh, please be careful. I worry about you.” So it’s like your typical sheltered family that really wants to hold on to memories of Frank the altar boy, and Frank singing in the choir, and Frank the Boy Scout, not Frank the policeman who’s having to cap these people coming after him with guns.
• • •
The shooting went down around three in the morning, and the detectives released me about eight or nine. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to my husband, but another officer called and told him what happened. He passed the information on to our twelve-year-old son, who was home because it was summertime. Then he went to work. When I pulled into our driveway, my son came running out to the car. He was crying. He’s really sensitive at times, and as soon as he saw me, he just lost it.
I calmed him down and told him I was OK. I told him that everything was fine, that Mama’s not hurt, that I did what I was supposed to do, and that I didn’t kill the guy. I knew that beyond my safety, he was a little concerned that I maybe killed somebody. I said, “No, I didn’t kill him, but if I had killed him, it would’ve been because he pointed a gun at me, but I didn’t kill him. He’s gonna be all right, so there’s nothing for you to worry about.” After that, he was fine.
My son loves to walk our dogs, so we got the pups, went for a walk, and when we came back, I let him pick what he wanted to eat for breakfast. That was a mistake, because he picked egg burritos and French fries. I thought, “Well. Whatever. That’s fine,” and we went out to get some breakfast. So I consciously spent a lot of time with my son that morning.
Deadly Dreams
Psychologists tell us that dreams are the place where we deal with emotions and conflicts that we have not worked out consciously and that nightmares are the expression of fears and anxieties about particular aspects of our waking lives that trouble us.4 Given the traumatic nature of police shootings, it should come as no surprise that it is not at all unusual for officers to experience nightmares in the wake of shootings.
The stories in this section provide some insight into the sorts of bad dreams that officers have, the contexts in which these nightmares emerge, and what these episodes might mean. We will hear of dreams in which officers did not fire soon enough, could not get their guns to work, or watched assailants press their attacks despite a hail of accurate gunfire. If the psychologists are correct about the sources of nightmares, the fact that officers sometimes have such dreams indicates that shootings sometimes produce fear and anxiety about their safety that officers do not know how to process during their waking hours. Whatever the case, it is clear from the stories that follow that officers who shoot sometimes experience substantial horror during what is supposed to be the peaceful time of slumber.
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nbsp; • • •
The first day, everything was so pumped up that I couldn’t get to sleep. I’d been up well over twenty-four hours when I finally got back home. I wanted to go to sleep, but I was just so pumped up that I couldn’t. I was zombied into the TV, just clicking channels, not even thinking about it. The next few days were like that, too. I’d try to go to sleep, but then I’d start to think about the shooting, and boy, there went my adrenaline right back up to that spot where it was right after it happened. Then, when I finally did fall asleep, I’d wake up after about four hours, think about the shooting, and get charged up again, which made it hard to go back to sleep.
I was having some dreams too. I remember one night, I think it was about a week and a half after the shooting, a guy I grew up with came to visit. He brought some drinks over, so we just sat around, watching a game or a movie, talking and drinking some beers. We finally went to bed. He was sleeping on the couch, and I went in and fell asleep on my bed.
All of a sudden, I heard this “BOOM!” and I came sailing up out of my bed, grabbed my gun, and went over to the window.
He woke up, saw me stumbling around in the dark, knocking everything over, and asked me, “What’s going on?”
I asked him if he heard that gunshot, and he replied, “No.” So then I was thinking, “Shit, maybe I capped a round off in my sleep!” So I opened my gun up, saw six rounds in the cylinder, and knew the shot wasn’t from me. I’d apparently been dreaming about the shooting and heard my gunshots go off. It just sent me straight up out of bed.
• • •
I never had any dreams about the shooting incident—none that were even similar to it—but the dreams I do have have changed since the shooting. I used to get these recurring dreams where I’d either go to pull my trigger and it’s so rusted that I can’t pull it, or I’m pulling and the bullets are coming out in slow motion, or I’m pulling and I’m hitting the shit out of the suspect but he’s just laughing at me. I had these dreams even before I was a cop, when I first started getting interested in law enforcement. Once I got hired, I had probably three or four of these dreams a month. Well, since the shooting, I don’t have those dreams anymore. I haven’t had them for two years, but I recently had two dreams where I got shot.
In all the dreams before the shooting where my equipment doesn’t work, or I was shooting the suspect but he’s laughing at me, or the rounds just aren’t working, I was never shot. I guess the recent dreams about getting shot are because of all the cops that’ve been shot back East and up North. There’s been so many incidents of officers shot and killed lately; one that really bugged me was where two deputy sheriffs were shot and killed. Both of my dreams happened since that incident.
In the first one, I got shot in the leg, and I remember going down on the ground, but I don’t remember reacting before I woke up. I was pissed I didn’t get a chance to respond, because I took a law enforcement survival class a long time ago where they told us that we can take control of our dreams and survive those bad ones. The second one was different. In the second dream, I got shot really bad. I got shot in the leg, and I remember the round burning really bad; then I took two hits to my chest. I got so fucking pissed, I started to wake up. But I told myself before I woke up, “Uh-uh, this shit ain’t over. The son of a bitch is going with you.” So I stayed in the dream and shot this guy probably eighteen times. When I woke up, I thought, “At least I survived this one. I got shot, but I didn’t die.” That’s what I always tell myself in the field: “If you ever get shot, you’re not gonna die. You’re not gonna frickin’ die. You’re gonna get rounds back downrange.” And that’s what I did in that dream. Since that dream, that second dream about getting shot, I haven’t had any more of ’em.
• • •
It’s been eight years since the last incident happened, but I still dream about my shootings. I don’t think that stuff will ever go away. I also have dreams about shootings in general, like having to shoot somebody and my gun won’t fire because I don’t have the strength to squeeze my trigger. I’m in justifiable shooting situations, where there’s absolutely no way that they could ever hold anything against me, and then, all of a sudden, I try to shoot, but I can’t pull the trigger, or I squeeze and the gun just clicks, or my gun falls apart, or I shoot the person and it doesn’t even phase ’em. I can tell I’m hitting ’em in the head because part of their head is blowing off, and I see their brains and all this stuff, but nothing happens. They’re still talking normal; they’re still coming toward me. I’ve had those dreams quite often. It’s not something that happens every night, but it happens pretty regular, maybe a couple of times a month.
Nerves
The fear and anxiety that officers sometimes experience about dangerous encounters is not limited to the subconscious venue of their dreams. Conscious concerns about shooting situations, moreover, are not limited to fear and anxiety about their personal safety. Some officers become quite concerned about whether they will be able to pull the trigger again if circumstances call for them to do so, usually worrying that their potential inability to act could jeopardize their fellow officers or innocent citizens.
For most officers who experienced them, worries about their safety and their ability to shoot again arose during their time off following their shootings, manifested themselves most strongly when they first returned to duty, and then dissipated as they got back into their work routine. For other officers, however, such concerns lasted long after they went back to work and as a result became a persistent thorn in their side. The stories in this section address the fear and anxiety that officers who shoot sometimes experience during their waking hours, how these concerns affect their behavior, and how these problematic reactions play themselves out.
• • •
The shooting happened on a Friday, and I had the next three days off. During that time, I was pretty anxious about going back to work. In fact, I wanted to go back to work. I wanted to get with my partner and talk to him about it. I also knew that everybody else in the division was going to have been talking about it. I was still pretty new on the job, and I wanted to see how the veteran officers responded. The older guys don’t know what to expect from the young guys like me, who haven’t been tried and tested. I figured that because I showed I could do the ultimate thing if I needed to, that I was gonna be accepted by a lot of the older guys.
As I recall, the other cops did offer a lot of support when I did get back to work. The thing I remember the most about the first shift back, though, is that I was what I call “holster happy.” My partner and I both were. The guy I shot had kind of got the jump on us, so we were nervous about it happening again. Anytime anyone reached for their wallet, we had our hands on our guns. Anytime anyone did anything sudden or unexpected, we drew our guns. It was the longest night I ever had at work. I was physically and mentally exhausted at the end of the night. We stayed busy that night. We were answering calls, we were stopping cars, but anytime anybody did anything sudden—like reaching to pull up an emergency brake—we drew down on them. You know, “Let me see your hands.” It was real intense the first night back to work.
I slowly got back to normal after a few weeks to where I’d see a movement and tell myself, “OK, he’s reaching for his wallet,” or whatever. I’d still keep a sharp eye out. I was still ready, I just wasn’t drawing down on people all the time.
• • •
After my first shooting, I was worried about how I’d perform if I got involved in another one. The local newspapers had reamed me, saying that I’d shot too soon, so I wondered, Was I gonna hesitate and risk somebody else’s life? Some other citizen’s? Some other officer’s? Then, a little while after the shooting, I had a rookie that I was training, and we came upon a guy that had a gun in his car. It was on the front passenger’s seat, hidden underneath a sack of beer, and when he started to reach for it, I drew my gun, ready to start shooting if I had to. I wasn’t even thinking about anything else. I said to myself,
“As soon as he touches it, I’m going to cap him.” We were yelling at him, “Don’t touch the gun! Don’t touch the gun!” He finally quit reaching before his fingers touched the gun, and we got him under control.
After we took the guy into custody, I thought, “I didn’t even think about my other shooting. That’s good. I’m not going to hesitate.” That really helped alleviate my fears that I might hesitate to shoot again because of all the crap that had happened in the media with the first one. Once I realized I wasn’t going to hesitate, I was fine.
• • •
The shooting happened on my Friday, and I started back to work on my Monday. So I didn’t miss a single day of work. My regular partner took that day off, so I was with another officer, a newer officer, that first day back after the shooting. Our very first call out of the barn was just a “preserve the peace” call. It turned out to involve three guys that were living together, with some type of love triangle that involved some type of DV. We met one of the guys outside, and he told us what was going on and that he wanted to get some stuff from inside the place. We said, “OK, we’ll go see if they’ll let you get your property, and if they do, great, we’ll just stay back and make sure no one causes any problems. Otherwise, you’ll have to take it to court, because it’s a civil issue.”
We went inside, and the guy in there was being real nice, letting the other guy get his stuff. We were standing against this wall near the front entry, just watching this going on, when all of a sudden what looked like maybe the feminine partner of the other two came out of a bedroom. He had long, long stringy hair, long fingernails, was very skinny, and he was screaming like a banshee, saying stuff like, “Get him out of here! He hurt me!”
I said, “Hold on a second. It’s OK, he’s not gonna hurt you. We’re right here. Your friend let him get his stuff. He’s just gonna get his stuff and go.”
The guy replied, “No, I want him out of here.”
Into the Kill Zone Page 32