Into the Kill Zone

by David Klinger

  So after my shooting, I was waiting for all this stuff the academy teaches, all the shock and sleepless nights, the tears, and so on. I was waiting for it, but nada. Nothing ever came. Nothing at all. I’d told my wife what happened when I first saw her after the shooting and told her to get ready for the tough stuff. Told my other family and friends. Told the story till I got sick telling it because I wanted everybody to know what happened and how I was feeling, so they’d know what was going on when it hit. So I was braced, “OK, here it comes.” But it never did. I was almost feeling guilty that I didn’t have the guilty thoughts. But it wasn’t there, it just wasn’t there. I’ve never had any negative stuff about the shooting, and it’s been a few years—no remorse or anything negative whatsoever.

  Now maybe I repressed it, I don’t know, but I don’t think so, because some other stuff from the job does get to me. The biggest is that I keep getting this one nightmare from when I used to work patrol about twelve years ago. I got a call about these parents who beat up their child, a little baby. They were at the hospital, and Homicide had called me to detain the parents. I had to talk to the doctor first. I walked into the room and the baby was right there. He was dead. His eyes were wide open, big brown eyes, just like one of those Gerber babies. I could see this big impression of a fist on his stomach. The doctor was taking spinal fluid out of the child. I see all that in my dreams sometimes—the room, the kid, the fist mark. I mostly get them when I take a vacation. About the fourth or fifth night, I start getting these dreams. I don’t get them day to day as long as I’m working, but when I go on an extended vacation, then they come back.

  • • •

  I’ve always worked busy areas, so I’ve been involved in a lot of stuff in my six years on the street. I’ve been shot at several times, mostly sniper-type incidents, where we’d take rounds but couldn’t identify where they were coming from. We didn’t return fire in those cases because you can’t just fire indiscriminately, even when the patrol car takes rounds. I’ve been in four shoot-outs with gang-bangers but only hit one of the guys I traded shots with. Then recently, I killed a sixteen-year-old kid who was holding his girlfriend hostage after he shot some deputies.

  All these incidents had an impact on me, but it was other shootings where officers and deputies were killed that affected me the most. The first one happened when I was still in field training. Two officers from Reston, a neighboring city, were murdered when they made a traffic stop at this gas station. A couple of months after that happened, a deputy in my division was murdered at a man-with-a-gun call. About three years after that, I made the scene where a good friend of mine was shot and killed during a foot pursuit. And I just recently had a buddy who was killed in an off-duty deal, where a robber shot him in the head when he discovered my buddy was a deputy. I was at the hospital when he died. All of these deaths had a big impact on me, especially the two officers killed at the traffic stop when I was in training. I’ll never forget what I saw when we responded to the assistance call.

  When we got there, three one-man Reston cars had already responded. There was a fourth radio car with both the driver’s-side door and the passenger’s-side door wide open, parked in front of the gas station. The emergency lights were on, and there were two officers lying on their backs, basically parallel to each other, on either side of the radio car. The one on the driver’s side was more toward the front of the car, and the other guy was more toward the back. They were both still alive. Two of the Reston officers were off to the side, not doing anything. They looked to be in shock, complete disbelief on their faces, just standing there. The other Reston officer was kneeling down next to the officer on the driver’s side of the radio car.

  So that’s what I saw when we pulled up.

  We found out later from the investigation what happened. The two officers, Dander and Johnston, made a regular vehicle stop on a blue sedan with just the driver in it. They got the suspect out of the car, and Officer Dander started to conduct a pat-down search. As he was searching, the guy pulled a gun out of his waistband. Apparently, Johnston didn’t know the guy was going for a gun. He believed that it was just gonna be a fight, so he came running up to help Dander.

  As Johnston was running up, rounds started going off. The first one hit Dander in the thigh. The second one caught him in his arm, his shooting arm, right at the elbow, incapacitating it. With his gun arm useless, he fell on his back. The suspect then fired several rounds at Johnston, who now had his back to the suspect because he had turned around and was trying to get to the other side of the car for cover. One of the rounds caught Johnston just above the vest and hit him in his neck area. He was bent over when he took the round; that’s why it was a fatal. If he’d been standing up a little more, it would have caught him in the vest. So Johnston went down, and the suspect turned again on Dander. Dander had his feet up in the air, I guess in a defensive position. The guy put a round in the bottom of Dander’s foot and then fired several more, striking him twice in the head. He then went over to Johnston, straddled him, did a coup de grâce on Johnston, jumped back in his car, and took off. So the suspect was gone long before we got there.

  When I got out of the car, I got one of the Reston officers to give me some information, and I put that out over the air real quick. Then I went over to Dander—I knew him from court—and looked at him. I yelled at him, “You’re going to be all right, buddy, hang in there.” But in my mind, I was saying, “Just die,” because he was messed up. From the severity of the wounds, I knew that if he survived that he was going to be a vegetable. I mean, I could see that he’d taken one round that entered above his right eye and exited the back of his head. He was a mess.

  Then I went over to Johnston. He was down on the ground, kind of shaking. There was what appeared to be brain matter off to the side of his head. It may have been, but it could have been food. Apparently, they had just finished eating. They’d each had a burrito, and they’d both been regurgitating, so there was like rice and stuff to the side of Johnston’s head. That’s why I’m not sure if the other stuff was brains or some other food.

  Both officers’ guns were still in their holsters, and I’ll never forget that, seeing both guns in their holsters. Another thing that stuck in my mind is that Dander was wearing his black gloves because it was nighttime in March, and it was still kind of cold. I was standing there in just complete disbelief, just in shock, looking at both of them and knowing they were going to die, thinking that we’ll do whatever we can for them, but knowing that they were going to die. I played that picture constantly back in my mind for a long time. It just was an incredible scene to see two guys down like that. Periodically, after all these years, when I think about it, that picture of them lying there dying still comes back.

  The Last Word

  The final voice we hear from is that of a veteran officer who shot two people, one fatally, during the first of his two decades in police work. Over the years, he has struggled mightily with both shootings, spending considerable time researching the consequences of killing and discussing with other officers how their shootings affected them. Given his informed perspective on the topic, he has the last word.

  • • •

  I’ve gone through some really tough times after my shootings, and I’ve talked to a lot of other officers who’ve been in shootings about how they handled it. Some have had some tough times like me, and some it hasn’t really bothered much at all. I teach shootings up at the academy, and one of the biggest things I tell those recruits is that everybody handles things different. I tell them about Hank Rickly on our department. He killed a guy who jumped through the window of his car armed with a knife.

  The guy had come up to his window, being real genial and just talking to him very nice and polite and calling him “sir,” when all of a sudden, he just pulled out this huge knife, said, “You son of a bitch!” and started trying to stab Hank through the open window. Hank just leaned away, pulled his gun, and shot the guy four times. Hank
was fine about everything. He knew about the difficulties I had after my shootings, and he told me that he woke up three days after the incident and said to himself, “Why don’t I feel bad?” So he and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

  But I think that shooting someone changes just about every cop who does it. If you haven’t been in a shooting, you can’t really understand it, and I don’t really know how to explain it, but after you shoot someone, things will never be the same. It’s almost like there’s a loss of innocence involved. You’ll just never look at life the same way.

  Notes

  1. General information about the investigations into police shootings, the inquiries that follow, and their outcomes can be found in Deadly Force: What We Know, by William A. Geller and Michael S. Scott (Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum, 1992). A case study of the investigation process in one jurisdiction can be found in Police Shootings and the Prosecutor in Los Angeles County: An Evaluation of Operation Rollout, by Craig D. Uchida, Lawrence Sherman, and James J. Fyfe (Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation, 1981).

  2. A discussion of civil litigation against the police can be found in Critical Issues in Police Civil Liability, by Victor E. Kappeler (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1993).

  3. Discussions of police officers’ tendency to be insular and suspicious of both those outside law enforcement and their superiors in the department can be found in Violence and the Police, by William Westley (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970); Working the Street: Police Discretion and the Dilemmas of Reform, by Michael Brown (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1981); and Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in a Democratic Society, 3rd ed., by Jerome Skolnick (Old Tappan, N.J.: Macmillan, 1994).

  4. Perhaps the most influential treatise on dreams is The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud, authorized translation of 3rd ed., with introduction by A. A. Brill (Old Tappan, N.J.: Macmillan, 1913). For a more recent discussion of nightmares, see, for example, The Nightmare: The Psychology and Biology of Terrifying Dreams, by Ernest Hartman (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

  Epilogue

  However their shootings affected them, the eighty men and women I interviewed have pressed on with their lives. Many of them still worked the same assignments they held when we spoke, some have been promoted or otherwise moved on to different jobs with their departments, some have taken positions with other law enforcement agencies, and several have left police work entirely.

  Among these officers, one resigned to start a small business, one quit to train horses, one went back to graduate school after retiring with twenty years of police service, one was forced to retire due to injuries he suffered during a scuffle with a resisting suspect, and one received a disability pension from the injuries he sustained in the incident described in the Officer Down section of the fourth chapter.

  Several of the officers who stayed in law enforcement have been in additional shootings since the time they sat for interviews. These include a pair of patrol officers who each killed gunmen in separate early-morning shoot-outs, another patrol officer who killed a young man who was holding his girlfriend hostage, three SWAT officers who shot armed murder suspects who were trying to evade capture, a SWAT sniper who killed a suspect who pointed a gun at his teammates, and a SWAT officer who shot two people in separate incidents during the summer of 2001.

  Finally, and tragically, one of the officers I interviewed did not survive a return visit to the kill zone. He was murdered late one February evening in 2001 when he caught up with a thief he’d been chasing through one of the housing projects that dot his inner-city patrol beat. In the bland parlance that is often used by both the press and the police to describe knock-down-drag-out fights between cops and crooks, “a struggle ensued,” and the thief somehow managed to wrest the officer’s gun from his holster, place the barrel against his forehead, and pull the trigger. This brave officer was thirty-seven when he was murdered. His youngest child was just seven weeks old.

  • • •

  I have lived with the kill zone for a quarter century now: contemplating the possibility that I might have to shoot someone prior to joining the LAPD, preparing for this prospect during my academy and field training, taking a life while I was still wet behind the ears, living with the consequences, holding my fire during numerous close calls, grieving the loss of friends and colleagues who were gunned down, studying how other officers deal with their time in the kill zone, and teaching both college students and police officers around the country about the role that deadly force plays in our society and how using it affects the men and women who pull the trigger. As I reflect back on all this experience, two things stand out in my mind—one social, the other personal.

  On the social front, I believe that the profound effect that shooting someone can have on officers reflects the deep ambivalence that our freedom-loving society has about granting representatives of the state the power over life and death. We demand protection from the criminals and others in our society who might harm us, so we’ve given the police the power to use lethal force on our behalf. But we also fear for our freedoms, so we want our men and women in blue to use the awesome power they possess judiciously, perhaps even grudgingly.

  Thus, in some ways, it’s comforting to know that officers often have some difficulty in the wake of shootings. Their pain and reflection show us that our police are cut from the same cloth as we are, that they share our values, that they do not take lightly the power we’ve given them. And this assures us, at some deep level, that the men and women we empower to protect us are not likely to turn against us.

  On the personal front, I am struck by the honor of the men and women who willingly go into harm’s way every day to protect the rest of us. By and large, they understand the social compact that binds us; they understand that the awesome power they hold is not to be taken lightly; they understand that we expect them to be restrained. And so they are, even when—as the stories in the third chapter indicate—it exposes them and fellow officers to considerable danger.

  But officers also understand that there are times when they must exercise their ultimate power on our behalf. And when they believe they must, they do so, despite the fact that they know they will be criticized and second-guessed; that they may be sued or even prosecuted; and that there is a good chance their hearts, minds, or souls will suffer for what they have done.

  And so I tip my hat to all the good cops throughout our nation who risk their lives and strive to do the right thing when facing split-second decisions about life and death every day in the kill zone.

  Glossary

  00-buck: A type of shotgun shell that holds several (usually nine or twelve) .32-caliber pellets. Often carried in police shotguns. (00 is pronounced “double ott.”)

  12-gauge: A large-bore shotgun.

  20-gauge: A medium-bore shotgun.

  .22: A small-caliber handgun.

  .25 auto: A small-caliber semiautomatic handgun.

  .223: A high-velocity, small-caliber bullet that is typically used in assault rifles such as AR-15s, M-16s, and similar weapons (see definitions later in this section).

  .38: A medium-caliber revolver.

  .308: A medium-bore, high-velocity rifle bullet.

  .357 Magnum: A revolver that fires a medium-caliber, high-velocity bullet.

  .40-cal H&K: A medium-caliber semiautomatic pistol manufactured by Heckler & Koch Inc.

  .45: A large-caliber semiautomatic handgun.

  417: California Penal Code section that covers brandishing weapons.

  Adios, mi hijo: Spanish for “good-bye, my little one.”

  ADW: Assault with a deadly weapon.

  AK-47: A fully automatic assault rifle that was the standard-issue shoulder weapon in Soviet-bloc armies.

  AR-15: A semiautomatic assault rifle that fires .223-caliber ammunition. The law enforcement and civilian version of the M-16 fully automatic assault rifle that was standard issue to U.S. infantry units for many years (see M-
16).

  Bail, Bailed, Bailing: Getting out of a vehicle, usually used to refer to a suspect exiting a vehicle to flee.

  Bang, Banger: Short for flash-bang (see also noise flash diversionary device).

  BDU: Short for battle dress uniform, the military fatigue-like utility clothes that SWAT team members usually wear during operations.

  Benelli: Short for the semiautomatic .12-gauge shotgun made by the Benelli corporation that is carried by many SWAT teams.

  Beretta 92F: A 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun made by the Beretta corporation.

  Black Talons: A brand of hollow-point ammunition that is designed to mushroom upon impact, creating a larger wound channel in the body than would a standard round.

  Blue steel: A type of handgun finish.

  Body bunker: A type of handheld ballistic shield that is used to protect officers from gunfire.

  Brass: Bullet casings.

  Breacher: A police officer (usually a member of a SWAT or narcotics raid team) assigned to force open doors so that the rest of his or her teammates can enter a location unimpeded.

  Break and rake: A tactical procedure in which police officers standing outside a building shatter a window with a pole (the break) and then move the pole around the inside of the window frame to remove whatever glass or window treatments might remain (the rake). This tactic is usually used to distract suspects inside houses during the service of narcotics search warrants but is sometimes used to gain access to rooms during other sorts of SWAT operations.

  Bust caps, Busting caps: To fire one’s gun. As in, “I was busting some caps as the guy was shooting at me.”