Into the Kill Zone

by David Klinger

  I said, “He’s gonna get out of here shortly. We’re just getting his stuff and then we’re leaving.”

  He said, “No, he hurt me. I’m gonna kill him,” and took off running toward the kitchen. I ran after him because everybody knows what’s in kitchens, and sure enough, right when I turned the corner into the kitchen, here was this guy—I mean he was just totally pathetic looking—holding this big ole butcher knife up in the air.

  I drew my gun and said, “Drop the knife!” He said, “No, he hurt me.” Legally and technically and everything else, I could’ve shot him if I wanted to, but I just kept telling him, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife! Put the knife down!” Finally, he dropped the knife and he started crying. I went into the kitchen, put the handcuffs on him, and gave him to my partner. I said, “You take care of this guy,” leaned against a wall, and started taking some deep breaths. I was thinking, “I can’t believe this. First call out of the barn, first day back from the shooting, and here I am, almost getting in another shooting.” I was also thinking, “The press would have a field day with this.” You know, here’s this guy with an itchy trigger finger.

  As I was against the wall, thinking, “God, I can’t believe this!” the guy who was being very cooperative said, “Officer, can you come here for a second?” and motioned me into the bedroom. When I started walking into the room, he was on the other side of this small, maybe ten-by-twelve-foot, room facing away from me. He started to turn toward me, and as he did, I saw that he had a Smith & Wesson semiauto in his hands. I said, “No!” That’s all I could do. I couldn’t react to pull my gun again, and the guy said, “No, no. I want to give it to you, I want to give it to you.” He didn’t want this skinny guy to have it in the house. I took it from him, and I was so pissed that I started lecturing to this guy, “Don’t you ever . . . !”

  When my partner saw what happened, he called for a supervisor. When the sarge got there, he asked me, “Billy, you want to go home today?” I should’ve, but I was thinking that I handled what happened properly. Even though my heart was going a mile a minute, I figured I could handle it. Since then, I’ve always been able to handle dangerous situations properly. It’s just the aftereffects. It takes me a little while to calm down after something like that happens. It just takes some time.

  • • •

  I was scared to death to go back to work. Absolutely terrified. I did not want to go back. The administration hadn’t given me the prosecutor’s statement saying that they weren’t going to file charges on me. I knew that that had happened on all the other shootings involving our officers since I came on the job, but I still had this situation pending on me. I was worried that I’d get in trouble if I had another shooting before the prosecutor cleared the first one, so I questioned my ability to pull the trigger again. Then, one of my first days back in the field, a call came out that there was a man with a shotgun in the cemetery threatening to commit suicide. All the other units got on the air. “Unit 24 en route. Unit 21 en route. Blah, blah, en route.” But I didn’t respond. I was thinking, “I’m just happy right here.” The guy I’d shot was suicidal, and I was scared, absolutely terrified, that the same thing would happen again, and I didn’t know if I could shoot if I had to.

  Before I’d gone back to work, the department sent me to a psychologist for a mental-fitness evaluation, but I kept my feelings bottled up, didn’t tell him the truth of what I was feeling. He went ahead and signed me off for duty, and I thought, “You stupid fool. You don’t have a clue.” I didn’t tell him because I didn’t trust the fact that he was working for the department. I was afraid that if I’d sat there and told him all my emotions, all my fears, all of what I was going through, that he would say, “You’re not fit to go back to duty,” and I’d lose my job. So I didn’t tell him I was still having an emotional time dealing with it, that I was afraid to go on calls. That fear lasted for a very long time, even after I was cleared by the prosecutor.

  Tough Adjustments

  Even though the stories presented thus far have focused on specific aspects of officers’ post-shooting responses, some of them also make the point that officers can experience more than one reaction in the wake of shootings. Some officers who experience several difficulties resolve them in rather short order, whereas other officers are not so fortunate.

  The stories in this section focus on the tough times that officers have when troubling reactions gang up on them. They include stories from officers who managed to put the difficulties they experienced behind them rather quickly, officers who took considerably longer to work things out, and officers who were still suffering quite a bit at the time they shared their stories with me.

  All of the stories in this section illustrate just how deeply disturbing shootings can be for officers who pull the trigger. Those from the officers who fell into the latter two adjustment categories show that shootings can even bring some officers to points of anger, guilt, and despair that quite literally place their careers, their peace of mind, and even their lives in substantial jeopardy.

  • • •

  My second shooting hit me a lot harder than my first. About an hour after it happened, I felt like I was going to vomit. I don’t know why. Maybe it was something I ate for dinner, but I don’t think it was, because I felt lousy for about three days—lost my appetite and got diarrhea. I was pretty bad off. I don’t know what happened to me. I suppose it could have been that I was going to get sick anyway, but about an hour after I killed the guy, I told the investigators, “Somebody get me a bag because I feel like I’m going to puke.”

  Then, after I got home, I was really tired. The shooting happened at 10:00 P.M. I got home at about 7:00 the next morning, and I slept like a rock until about 2:00 P.M. Then I got up to go to my daughter’s softball picnic, came back home, went back to bed about 9:00 P.M., and slept till about 7:00 the next morning. I probably could have slept even more that first day, but the phone was ringing constantly, and my pager kept going off between 2:00 P.M. and when we left for the picnic. Seemed like everybody I knew wanted to check up on me and find out what happened.

  The picnic didn’t go real well. I was sitting there with all the other parents, feeling real pensive, thinking about the night before. My wife asked me a few questions, and I responded with real short answers.

  She didn’t like that, so she said, “What’s the matter with you?”

  I lost it right then. I stood up and said, “Goddamn it, Sally, I just fucking killed somebody last night. You think that might be weighing on my mind a little bit?” Then I just started walking to the car, and as I was walking, I started crying a little bit. I couldn’t believe my wife’s attitude. I’d been married to her for all these years. She’s a cop’s wife, and she asked me what’s wrong with me the night after I shoot somebody? I couldn’t believe it.

  Sally caught up to me just as I got to the car. I was still crying. I wiped away the tears and said to her, “You, of all people! I thought you would understand. I can’t believe you said something stupid like that.”

  Her response surprised me. She told me that she didn’t know how to deal with what I was going through, that she didn’t know what to say. Then she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was the stupidest thing I have ever said in my life. I don’t know why I said it. I’m sorry. Forgive me.” I told her that I did, and that’s all there was to the crying.

  The upset stomach and whatnot lasted for another couple of days. Then some other stuff came along. The biggest thing was that I started to become more concerned about my safety. I had gotten into a bad habit over the years of sometimes not taking my gun with me when I went out. I’d always bring it with me if I went downtown or some place like that, but I’d leave it at the house if I was just gonna run to the store to get some milk or return a videotape, short trips like that. A few days after I killed this guy, I noticed that I no longer felt comfortable if I went someplace without my gun. I don’t know what it was, but something prompted me to
start carrying my gun wherever I went. I guess I just want to be sure that I’m ready. Something can go wrong anyplace, and I don’t want to be caught with my pants down, so now I don’t leave my house without my gun.

  I wasn’t the only one who got more concerned for my safety. My oldest daughter was eight when the second shooting went down, so she was old enough to understand what it was all about. She started getting scared. I’d been on the SWAT team since before she was born, and my work never bothered her before, but she started going through a phase where she got scared when I was home and the pager went off to call me to work. I talked to her about it, and she told me that she was afraid that I was going to die, that some bad guy was going to shoot me. So I had to deal with that for a while.

  Maybe that was the difference between the two shootings. I had kids now.

  • • •

  I think the toughest thing that happened after the shooting was seeing a picture of the guy I shot on TV about a day or so after I killed him. He was a real bad guy, wanted for all sorts of stuff, including escaping from prison, cooking crystal meth, and attempted murder on both citizens and police officers. We got called out when the U.S. marshals caught up to him at his condo and he refused to surrender. We tried everything to get the guy to give up: negotiations, gas, even did an explosive breach on his front door to get a better view of the inside of the place. I was posted up near some of the other guys watching through the front doorway when all of a sudden the guy came running toward the doorway pointing a handgun at me.

  Things started slowing down for me, and my eyes focused on the gun. I could see it real clearly, the squareness of the barrel and the gloss of it, stuff like that, but for some reason I didn’t see the guy’s face. I fired two short bursts on full auto, and when I started shooting, things got real weird. I never heard any of my shots going off, but I did hear a “clack, clack, clack” sound from my gun, maybe the spring action of the bolt in the carrier moving back and forth. I could also feel the gun. It was kind of shaking and vibrating while I was shooting. I was aware that other officers were also firing, and I saw some rounds hitting the door frame, which sent wood chips flying off, but I still didn’t see the guy’s face. The whole time I was firing, it was like I was watching from a few steps behind where I was, just standing there watching me shoot, the bullets hit, and so on. In fact, it took a few seconds after I stopped firing for me to realize exactly what had just happened. By then, the guy had fallen down, and it was basically all over.

  He fell face first, so when we went into the condo a few minutes later to clear it, all I could see was the back of his head. That was fine with me because I didn’t want to see his face. In fact, I didn’t want to know anything about this guy, didn’t want to see what he looked like, didn’t want to know his name. I didn’t want to know what kind of husband he was, what kind of a dad, any of that. I just wanted to know the things that I had seen, that this guy was an asshole who was out to hurt people and didn’t give a shit about the police or anybody else. So I was glad that I didn’t see his face out at the scene. In fact, I was hoping that I’d never see the guy’s picture, and I was hoping I’d never hear his name. For some reason, I wanted to keep a sense of distance from the guy, but it didn’t work out that way.

  I had been feeling kind of sad since the shooting. I didn’t feel sorry for the guy, because he wasn’t a decent person. I just felt that it was a shame that his life had to end the way it did. I also had a sense of sadness that I wasn’t able to make it through my career without killing someone. Shooting situations weren’t something I sought out, and after fifteen years on the job with none, I figured I’d never have any, ’cause they tend to happen to younger guys. I also felt sorry for everybody else that was involved with the guy, like his wife and the people that owned the condo, because it was so messed up. Overall, I just had a sense that it was too bad that it happened.

  I didn’t realize how much it was bugging me till I saw the guy on TV.

  It was either the day after the shooting or the day after that when I was just sitting on the sofa casually watching the TV. All of a sudden, they flashed a picture of the guy up on the screen and said his name. It wasn’t the type of picture you’d expect for some guy who just got killed by the police, like a prison picture or maybe a driver’s license photo. It was a family picture. There was this happy-looking guy with a smile on his face up on my TV screen. It really upset me a lot because the picture that they put up there portrayed him as if he was a kind of a regular happy-go-lucky guy. He didn’t look like a biker or anything like that. He just looked like a regular guy, and I thought, “Shit, I didn’t want to see that picture.” Then I started crying. A few seconds later, my wife came in the room. When she saw me crying, it kind of upset her. I’m not some macho-type guy, I’m pretty easy going, but I’m almost always in control of my emotions. So crying felt strange because it was a loss of control on my part. I wasn’t embarrassed or anything like that. In fact, it felt kind of good to let it out, but it sure bothered my wife. I don’t think she ever would have expected to see me crying, and she just didn’t know how to handle it.

  • • •

  The guy fell right after I fired my fourth round. He went down face first with his hands up underneath him. I remember thinking that he wasn’t hit, that he was trying to get me to move close to him so he could bring the knife out and stab me, so I stayed about three or four yards away. One of the other two officers on the scene came running up on my shoulder and asked me what happened. I told him that the guy pulled a knife. Then I told him that I thought he had it underneath him and not to get too close. Then we started moving up on the guy, real slow. I kind of went around to his feet, where I could see a large pool of blood starting to form up by his head. I looked to see where it was coming from, and I could see he had a large mass of blood in his hair, in the back of his head. He looked lifeless, so I was pretty sure he was dead.

  At that point, I kind of went numb.

  Then things started happening. The third officer who was there from the start began to secure the scene. A corporal arrived soon after that, and he took my gun immediately from me. He said, “You know your rights, right?” I said “Yeah.” He asked me what happened, and I told him. He said, “OK, why don’t you go stand over there,” pointing to the car of this other officer who had just arrived. From that point on, everything that happened out at the scene I experienced as if I was watching it from above. I was looking down from across the street, seeing me standing at the police car next to this other officer. I saw some other officers put the crime scene tape up. Then the paramedics got there, they checked the guy, and said he was dead.

  A little while later, I remembered that I needed to get something out of my patrol car. It was still parked in the street, just outside the crime scene tape. When I walked to my car, there was a couple standing by it. The girl was crying. The guy was holding her. I remember thinking that that was his family, that they were going to see that I didn’t have a gun in my holster and know that I was the guy that did it. After I got the stuff from my car, I went back to the officer I’d been standing with. Then, very shortly after that, they had him take me to the station. It was probably three in the morning by then.

  After they got done with me out at the scene, I was real antsy. I felt like I had to talk to somebody who’d know what I was going through. I wanted to talk to a buddy of mine named Mitch Barnes. He and I went through the academy together and he’s my best friend. I wanted to talk to him because he’d been in a shooting at the first agency he worked, and I figured he’d know what I was feeling. So after I called my wife and told her what happened, I called Mitch and woke him up. I just had to talk to somebody who knew what I was going through. I don’t know why I felt that way. I just had this overwhelming desire and urge to talk to somebody who knew what I was feeling. I think that I figured that was the only way I could calm down. I was really keyed up, walking around, not able to sit still. I figured I needed to do someth
ing to occupy myself, and I thought that when I talked to Mitch that I could calm down, that he was the only person that was going to know what I was thinking.

  So I called him up, told him what happened, and he came right down to the station. We hadn’t had a whole lot of officer-involved shootings in my agency, so it was mass chaos at the PD. Nobody knew how to handle it. Commanders came in, but they didn’t know what to do, so I spent several hours just hanging around. After this went on for a while, Mitch said to them, “Hey, Ted’s been at this thing for a while. He was supposed to get off at three o’clock this morning and it’s now nine o’clock. He hasn’t had anything to eat. Let me take him out to breakfast. We’ll come back and you can finish up with him, but he needs some food.” They said, “OK,” and we started to get ready to head for breakfast.

  Now, like I said, they had taken my gun away early on in the investigation, but I was still in uniform. I mentioned the fact that I didn’t have a gun to this one particular captain, but he said I would just have to do without one for right now. Mitch pulled me aside and told me he had something I could use. So we went over to his desk, he fished around in it and brought out a model 60. I put it in my holster. It fit, it didn’t flop out, so off we went to breakfast with this little gun in my holster.

  We talked about the shooting a little bit there, just general stuff. He told me not to turn in the report that I was going to have to write when we went back to the PD until he read it. He said that I might write some weird stuff in there and that I needed to be logical, that I needed to write with clear-cut thoughts in mind. I said, “OK.” We went back to IA and I sat down and wrote my report. Mitch reviewed it, I made a couple of changes, and we turned in the final product.

  I finally went home about two o’clock in the afternoon, maybe later. Incredibly, I couldn’t go to sleep. I’d been up all night, stayed up all day, but I couldn’t go to sleep. I was glued to the news. Five o’clock, six o’clock, ten o’clock news, glued to it. Everybody told me before I left the station, “Don’t watch the news, don’t read the papers.” I didn’t want to read the papers because I hated our newspaper. We called it the “News and Slander.” But I was glued to the television. Flipping back and forth between the different networks. I slept that night. I don’t remember how well, but after I woke up the next day, Mitch called and asked me how I was doing. I told him I was OK but that I had this weird tightness in my chest. Mitch said that they were going to send some guys over to sit in my driveway and watch my place because someone had phoned in some threats to the department. He said the threats were nothing serious, that nobody knew where I lived, but they wanted me to be able to sleep. Nothing ever came of the threats, but I had guys sitting in my driveway and in my garage twenty-four hours a day for about three days.