Into the Kill Zone

by David Klinger

  • • •

  Three of us—me, another female officer, and one of the SWAT officers—had been chasing this guy through the grounds of this shopping mall early one morning, when he spun around with a gun in his hand. The SWAT officer and I were both pretty close to him at that point, maybe fifteen feet, and we both fired. After I fired my last round, the guy went down real hard onto his back, and he started screaming. I couldn’t see where the gun went, but I saw that his hands were empty, so I moved up on his left side. I kept my gun trained on his chest the whole time and stopped up by his head.

  The other female officer ran up behind the SWAT officer, and the two of them moved up on the suspect’s right side. The SWAT officer then told the suspect to roll over onto his stomach so the other female officer could handcuff him. I didn’t want to keep my gun pointed at his torso because that’s where the other female was going to be when she moved in to cuff the guy, so I moved my aim point to the guy’s head. As I did that, I spotted the gun on the ground, just above his head. I saw it had an orange trigger, which meant it was a toy gun, and I got pissed off. I was mad. I don’t know if it’s the mother instinct or what, but I just shouted at him, “You stupid idiot. What the hell did you make us shoot you for?” Then I kicked the gun away and said, “It’s a toy,” to the SWAT officer, because I knew he’d fired also. He said, “It’s OK. It’s all right. You did what you’re supposed to do.”

  When he said that, I felt really great. I was very, very happy that I did what I was trained to do because that’s always the unknown in police work. You can train for it and train for it, but it’s an unknown if you’ll pull the trigger until you actually do it. I had a big grin on my face; I was almost laughing. It was like I’d passed my own little test and maybe a test in the eyes of other people. Part of that was because I’m female. There are a lot of male officers who don’t think females should be on the department, and I was thinking that I’d proved myself to them, so that was a big part of the elation I was feeling.

  Other Consequences

  Much of what happens to officers following a shooting does not fit neatly into any of the several categories that I used to organize the material I have presented thus far. This section includes a collection of stories that—in one way or another—shed additional light on officers’ post-shooting experiences.

  • • •

  The team would go to elementary school classes, and the kids would always ask us, “Anybody ever shot anybody?”

  Back then, I was the only one who had, so of course all the other guys would look at me. I’d say, “Well, yes, I have.”

  And I’d have kids saying, “Well, my mommy and daddy say that you’re a bad person if you kill people.”

  And I’d say, “Well, they’re right, they’re absolutely right.”

  They’d say, “Well, aren’t you a bad person?” What do you say to an eight-year-old?

  I’d say, “But there are times that you try to defend somebody. When you want to help somebody, and it just turns out that someone doesn’t want to be helped.” So you try to explain it to them in eight-year-old terms, which is kind of hard sometimes.

  • • •

  The guys investigating the shooting treated us pretty good, but it took an incredible amount of time for us to get any food. The shooting occurred before we got breakfast that morning, and we didn’t get fed until way late that afternoon. I don’t know if it was from that initial lack of food for so long or what, but I had an increased appetite for a month after this thing, and it started right then. I also became a little more sexually aggressive for a good long time. I don’t know where that came from, but I was just horny more. I wanted sex more.

  I’d almost been killed and I was pretty happy to be around. I wanted to do things that made me feel alive. I wanted to eat good food. I wanted to have good sex. I felt good about being alive. I enjoyed watching the butterflies. I went on vacation with my family. I spent more time with my kids. I found myself enjoying life a lot, really taking a moment to drink it all in. I wanted to try to gain new experiences. I wanted to go places I’d never been. I wanted to do things I’d never done. I wanted to do a lot more things before I died.

  • • •

  The shooting taught me a lot about priorities. I used to work all the time, as much overtime as I could. It was a higher priority than my family obligations. I’m not married, I don’t have kids, so it was easy for me to take all the overtime days and fill in when someone couldn’t make it in. I’d do that at the drop of a hat. I worked because I basically had no life. After the shooting, I thought about all those days that I missed out of watching my nieces and nephews grow, watching their soccer games, having them over to spend the night, taking them to the park, going on hikes. I didn’t do any of that stuff because I wanted to work.

  But the shooting made me realize that work’s not that important. It’ll always be there, but how often is my nephew going to say, “Hey, Aunt Mary, can you come over and spend the night tonight?” He was going on twelve when the shooting happened, so pretty soon he wasn’t going to want me there anymore. He’s going to want to do other things, and I would have missed out on those chances if I would have kept on working like I used to. Now when the kids ask if I can come over, I jump at the chance. So the shooting helped me reprioritize, to realize what’s really important.

  • • •

  After my first shooting, I really felt like I was a hypocrite, so I quit going to church. The Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill,” and here all the kids in church look at you, they almost idolize you when you walk in the door because you’re a cop, you know. I knew that when I walked in the door after the first shooting that all these kids would be asking their moms and dads, “Hey, the Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ How come Hal killed this guy?” I was having real hard trouble dealing with that, so I basically quit going to church altogether.

  A little while after I quit going to church, this PD chaplain came out to me on an off-duty job to tell me that the prosecutor was about to make his announcement about whether to charge or clear me. After he told me that, he gave me this piece of paper with some scriptures on it and said, “When you get a chance, you might want to read these.” So I did right there. One of the scriptures was from Romans, chapter thirteen: “Fear not the administrator”—and some versions actually say fear not the policeman—“for he is brought to you by God. You have no reason to fear him unless you do evil and if you do evil, then you have reason to fear him. For he does not bear the sword in vain.” The other one was, “Above all else comes the law.”

  After I read them, the chaplain told me, “You know, a lot of people think the Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but it doesn’t say that. It says, ‘Thou shalt not commit murder.’” Then he said, “You know, there’s a difference between killing and murder. Sometimes it’s necessary to kill people, and you did not commit murder.” When I heard that, I said, “He’s right.” And that really helped. I started going back to church, and by the time I got in my second shooting, I was involved in this Christian officers’ organization we had.

  • • •

  Overall, I was feeling pretty good. I was elated that the mission was successful, that I wasn’t hurt, that none of my teammates were hurt, and that everything looked like it was a very good shooting. We went in with all of our officers; we came out with our officers. We had a violent situation, none of us got shot, and the suspect was down. The only remorse I had was that I had to shoot the dog. I was sad because the dog was just doing what he was supposed to do: protect his master. It wasn’t the dog’s fault that his owner happened to be a dope dealer with guns. It was a shame we had to shoot a good dog.

  • • •

  I slept good that first night. I remember I put my son to bed. He was five at the time of the shooting. He’s seven now. I sat in there for probably fifteen minutes after he fell asleep and listened to him breathe. That’s like my favorite thing to do, hear him breathe. So I sat in there
and listened to him breathe for about fifteen minutes. I had eaten good at the station, and I ate good again when I got home, so I had probably three or four beers after I put my son to bed, and then my wife and I went to bed. We actually made love that night and then I slept perfect. I didn’t have any dreams. I slept really comfortably. I wasn’t restless or anything. Slept eight, nine, ten hours. Woke up the next day, and the first thing I thought about was the shooting. Played it over in my mind a bunch of times. Then, probably an hour after I woke up, the phone started ringing off the hook.

  I probably fielded fifty calls the first day, and I didn’t have a problem with it, because it was mostly SWAT people who wanted to know what was going on, friends from work. And the first thing they asked was, “Do you have a problem talking about it?” I said, “No, I don’t, I really don’t.” I said, “As far as I’m concerned, it was a righteous shooting. The guy caused the incident. We gave him every opportunity to give up, and he chose not to take them, so he pretty much forced the events to occur.” So I didn’t have any problem talking about it.

  The only thing about that first day was that I felt really tired, a little burned out. I don’t know if it was because I slept too long or what, but I just felt a little drained. I didn’t feel like doing a whole heck of a lot, just hanging out with my kid and my wife. That’s what I wanted to do. But I had to go into work for a debrief with the rest of the team. After it was over, Ralph—the other guy who fired—said, “Hey, let’s go drinking downtown.” I called my wife and asked her if that was OK with her. I told her that I felt like I should hang around with her, but she said, “Oh, no. Go hang out with Ralph. I’m sure he needs somebody to hang with.”

  We were drinking at the bar when the news came on, showing some footage from the scene that included some shots of Ralph and me. The waitress came up to us and said, “Hey, isn’t that you guys?”

  We were in street clothes, but she recognized us. So we said, “Yeah, that’s us.”

  Then she asked, “Were you guys the shooters?”

  And we replied, “Yeah, we were the shooters.” We didn’t know her, but she was really nice.

  She said, “OK, I won’t say anything out loud. I was just really curious because I saw your faces on the TV when you were walking through the scene, and you guys didn’t have a whole lot of expression on your face, so I kind of thought you were the shooters.”

  I thought that was kind of funny that some civilian that doesn’t really know about police work picked up on that.

  • • •

  I called my wife—she was at work—and told her what happened. She was like, “Oh, my God! Are you all right?”

  I said, “I’m fine,” and told her, “I’ll talk to you later about it, just wanted you to know that you’re gonna hear it on the news.” And then I didn’t really feel like talking to anybody else but my teammates. I didn’t want to talk to anybody else. The only people I wanted to be around were the guys I worked with, because they were the ones who were there. I didn’t feel like telling the story ten or twelve times to everybody.

  People had comments like, “God, you did a great job,” but I didn’t feel that way. I didn’t feel like what I did was such a great job. I didn’t feel like that at all. I don’t feel like taking a life is doing a great job. Even though it may come with the territory, killing someone is not doing a great job. But you just have to suck it up and do it if you have to, because if you’re gonna do this type of work, there’s a possibility that something like this is gonna happen to you. You just have to take it.

  • • •

  I don’t think you can really understand what it’s like to be in a shooting until you’ve been in one, because it’s not like watching a Hollywood movie. Everybody’s used to watching Hollywood, where cops take one shot and shoot the gun out of the bad guy’s hand, or every shot they take is a perfect center mass hit. Plus, from movies, people don’t know the fear of being shot at, the terror of gunfire coming at you. They don’t know what it feels like to be hit, even by a fragment. Those things are missing from the movies. When I went through it, I felt everything. I utilized all five of my physical senses, but in the movie theater you don’t have the cotton mouth, you don’t smell the gunpowder, you don’t feel the bullets hitting you.

  The Pathos of Policing

  The Not a Problem and Validation sections illustrate that shootings are not always detrimental for the involved officers and that they can even have positive repercussions. This does not mean, however, that officers who do fine after shooting people are immune from the stresses and strains of the violence they have confronted during their time on the job. Police work is widely regarded as one of the more stressful occupations in the world, at least partly because officers must regularly deal with the worst that humanity has to offer, the dead and broken bodies they produce, and the anguish they leave in their wake.

  For some officers, it is a single atrocity that stands out in their minds. For others, it is the accumulation of horror and misery that gets them. The stories in this section relate how three officers whose shootings produced no remarkable problems for them still suffered from other sorts of encounters with human violence. They begin with the ruminations of the busy cop, who cannot forget a young woman whose life—despite his best efforts—he could not save from the murderous designs of her jealous ex-boyfriend.

  • • •

  I’d have to say that my three shootings didn’t affect me too much. Even the fatals. But some other things on the job sure did. One of the biggest was a hostage situation that didn’t work out. It was a domestic violence thing, a lovers’ quarrel. It was one of those, “If I can’t have you, then nobody can,” deals. The guy went to the gal’s place of business, grabbed her, took her into a conference room, and held her hostage for a while—I guess to say whatever he wanted to say—before he killed her and then killed himself.

  When we got there, patrol had already determined the room they were in. The patrol cops had talked to him through the wall, so we were well aware of what was going on even before we got there. The negotiators got the guy on the phone, and my team got positioned right outside the room in order to do an emergency assault if we had to go in to rescue the girl. The door to the conference room was one of those that can’t be locked, and we placed some fiber optics into the room, which showed that he hadn’t barricaded the door. With that situation, we were almost guaranteed instant entry if we had to go in.

  From the fiber optics, we knew exactly where he was, where she was, where the table and chairs were. He was holding her near the opposite end of the room from the door where we were stationed, lying down with her behind some chairs, partway under this long conference table. We knew everything about the room, so we felt real confident that we could rescue the girl if we were told to do so. There were no guarantees, but we felt confident. We assumed that it would be a simple matter of getting in as fast as we could and shooting him, unless, of course, he just threw his hands up and surrendered when we came in.

  The plan I put together was to do a limited entry, where my point man was going to go to the end of the table that was near the door to try to get a shot straight down the table at him. If he didn’t have a clear shot, he was going to continue on across the room until he could get a shot on him. The second man was going to go to a different spot in the room to try to draw the boyfriend’s fire while the first guy moved to get a clear shot. I was going to go along the opposite wall to get a different firing angle. And the last guy was going to be my hands man. He was going to wait for my signal to come in, grab the hostage, and drag her out. So the plan was basically to draw the guy’s fire toward us so that he didn’t kill his girlfriend, shoot him, and get her out of there.

  We told the commander we were ready to do it. The guy kept threatening to kill his girlfriend, but the commander told us not to go in unless the guy started shooting. Of course, I argued that if he started shooting, it was going to be too late to save the girl. But I didn’t
win that argument, and I did what I was told while the negotiators tried to get the guy to give up.

  Sure enough, a little while after we were told to sit tight, we heard a shot go off. The girl let out a scream, and we started to go in. As we were turning the doorknob, we heard a second shot. As we were going through the door, a third shot rang out. Then my point man took a shot that hit the guy just as he stuck his gun in his mouth and blew his head off. The whole thing took about three or four seconds.

  The investigation disclosed that the first two shots were the guy murdering his girlfriend and that the third shot was aimed at us; it lodged in the carpet just in front of the door we came through. It didn’t bother me that he’d shot at us, and it sure didn’t bother me that he killed himself, but I felt really bad, really angry, that the girl was dead. I was angry at the hostage taker, angry at the decision that was made not to go in earlier.

  She was a pretty young girl, had her whole life ahead of her. If she had a chance of making it out of there, it would have been with us going in to rescue her. I was mad that we weren’t allowed the chance to try and save her, but you know, I’m not the one who had to make that decision. So I didn’t dwell on it, but it made me angry for several days, and to this day I still feel bad for the poor girl.

  • • •

  I thought about the shooting a lot in the first few days afterward. What could I have done better? How could I have done it safer? How can I improve? But then there was this surprise. When I was in the academy, they told us that shootings were very stressful events. That guys who get in shootings feel guilty, cry afterward, can’t sleep, get divorced, and all sorts of other bad stuff. So during the academy, I got semiparanoid about getting into a shooting. I was worried about what a shooting would do to me, about these things that happen when you get in a shooting.