Did Oakland police & BART follow procedures in Saturday shooting of man with knives? (Op-Ed)
To protect and serve, http://bit.ly/aD23Lf
On Saturday, July 16, a minimum of five Oakland Police and BART police shot and killed a man who reportedly charged them with two knives. The man is dead and investigations of the shooting and the officers' behaviors are underway.
It is hard not to read about this case and think about the January 2010 report on OPD actions during the Lovelle Mixon incident, in which four officers were shot by Mixon in March 2009 before he was killed by police.
In the Mixon incident report, the independent evaluators made much of the OPD officers on the scene failing to identity a leader in charge of decision-making, a communications chain and a call for a SWAT team. The report said that "Since basic emergency incident management protocols were not being followed and no command post had been established, there was no centralized point for the collection and dissemination of intelligence" during that incident. There were four pages of conclusions recommending ways the OPD should improve its training procedures and accountability around crisis management and police chain of command. Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts held a press conference and vowed change.
Fast forward six months to Saturday's shooting, which for some, raises a whole set of questions about what kind of improvements in OPD procedures happened after Batts vowed change.
Was there a commanding officer at the scene who gave a coherent command to fire? Were the lives of those five officers in such jeopardy they all needed to shoot to kill - not to wound - to stop a 48-year-old suspect? Was a SWAT team needed--and called? Were emergency incident protocols followed? These were all recommendations for facing threat in the OPD report in January--did the OPD follow them this time?
Batts and OPD need to take a hard look at this incident in their investigation and determine whether the rank and file were indeed trained to follow procedures better after the Mixon incident report came out - or whether we have here yet another/an example of poorly-trained Oakland police needlessly taking a life in the process of defusing a situation.
The same is true for BART as well. Just as the local community continues to ask why a BART police officer pulled a weapon on Oscar Grant as he lay handcuffed on the platform with a 200-plus pound officer's knee in his back, OPD needs to find out why its officers who responded to Saturday's call pulled their weapons, who was in charge and whether appropriate procedures were followed.
Many in Oakland are weary of killing, even when done to supposedly protect our "safety." We'd like to see police and BART officers who are better trained and more accountable. (Many people in Oakland are even questioning whether BART officers should be armed at only, only have Tasers, etc.)
OPD and BART need to have an open, transparent review process of this incident--and share with the public not only were the shortfalls were, but how they will change. An independent investigation is a neccessary first step--and real improvement in officer response procedures may well be the second.
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A few notes on your questions, and I suggest you ask Sgt. Jeff Thomassen too:
1. There is no "shoot-to-wound." Firearms are only used as lethal force weapons, because they have such a high likelihood of lethality. Cops don't try to shoot to wound, they're trained not to, for various reasons. One is that it's very hard to hit anything with a gun under stressful circumstances. As such, police are trained to fire at "center of mass", the torso.
It is also very difficult to reliably stop an attack with an intentional wound. Aiming at "center of mass" is also done because it reliably causes rapid loss of blood pressure, which is the only definite way to stop a person.
These are nationwide, if not international standards for the use of lethal force in intervention.
2. If in fact the man charged at an officer, attempting to attack him with two knives, there would be no need for a commander to give an order to fire. In an immediate lethal threat situation, police (and civilians too, actually) are legally entitled to respond with lethal force.
Lastly, if there was a way to prevent this shooting, it wasn't about the combat procedures. If anything could have stopped this, it would have been better mental health response training for the BART officers, who were first on scene.
There may have been a way to talk to this disturbed knife-wielding man and calm him down. There may have been no alternative. But the moment of first contact with the suspect is what I would really be interested in learning more about.
This is a very confused perspective and essentially uninformed. An op-ed usually represents an informed opinion. Or is supposed to.
The situations with Lovelle Mixon or Oscar Grant were not like this recent one: with Mixon the whole situation was very very complex, with police putting themselves at risk (and suffering for it) at several different instances because of poor procedure. Mixon began the shooting by murdering two cops in cold blood after a traffic stop.
Oscar Grant was killed by a poorly-trained, possibly homicidal cop who was way out of procedure in using lethal force.
In this shooting by police (BART and OPD) there is nothing presented here which would suggest that SOP was not followed.
The person who was shot was probably heavily on drugs and no doubt also emotionally disturbed to begin with. A lot of alcohol and cocaine would mean a lot of adrenaline flowing, fight and flight reaction, and plenty of endorphins to make him quite resistant to sensations of pain. Two taserings would certainly slow down most people, even big, strong ones.
So you've got someone who is completely out-of-control and is a threat to himself and anyone nearby. The police have few options. Sure, if they can control him, they can 5150 him to John George Pavilion which is the County psychiatric lock-up, where maniacs can controlled until they calm down and sober up.
Cops are also human beings. I doubt whether there are many cops who can shoot someone, anyone, without suffering profoundly as a result. All shootings by cops are investigated--an investigation doesn't mean that the shooting was improper.
The op-ed writer should also know something about the suicide-by-cop problem. It's very hard on a cop to have to deal with this.
This is a lose, lose situation all around. The guy who was shot needed help a long time ago, as Max pointed out. The guy who was shot no doubt preferred cheap wine and crack to spending time with a counselor. Bad choice on his part and everyone suffers as a result.