Split-Second

Hot summer night.  I was coming back from a walk through the darkened streets of my neighborhood when I stopped to water the plants on my patio.  Out of the darkness, four or five LAPD officers came down the street on foot, shining flashlights into backyards, side yards, driveways, windows, cars.  One hopped the fence across the street and I could see his flashlight beam slinging around in the tree-shadowed darkness.  Several beams lit me up and in the blinding glare I heard a man’s voice:  “Hey, did you see anybody come walking this way?”  I told him no.  “Well if you see a guy, maybe five-eight, 140 pounds, white with scraggy blond hair, dial 911, will you?”

The cop did not wait for an answer.  The group dematerialized back into the shadows, moving off down the street and soon disappearing without a trace.  Then, as I finished the watering and turned off the hose, a guy, white, five-eight, 140 pounds with scraggy hair rounded the corner and calmly walked down the street in the direction the cops went.  If he kept going, he was sure to catch up with them.  Should I call 911?  Should I get involved?

I started walking after him.  I really had no plan.  I would follow the guy who was following the cops and see what would happen.  Stupid on my part.  The guy walked faster and began to pull ahead of me.  I’d see him pass through a puddle of light from the street lamps, then disappear into the darkness only to emerge again in the next puddle.  I picked up the pace and began a light jog.  I took out my cell phone and dialed 911.

“911 emergency.”

“Yeah, the guy you’re chasing, he’s heading east bound from the boulevard.”

The operator quizzed me about cross streets, what the guy was wearing, if I saw any officers in the vicinity. “Are you following him, sir?” she wanted to know.

“Yes, yes I am, but he is getting away.”

You need to stay back,” she cautioned.  Truer words and all that, but I kept increasing my speed.

I watched the guy pass through a lit area and then into the darkness beyond.  He did not re-emerge.

From all around the neighborhood, I heard revved engines and screeching tires.  Police cars careened out of the darkness.  One slid to the curb and I pointed down the street where I last saw the suspect.  The cops did not even say anything to me but sped away toward where I was pointing.  I could see there was a driveway there and a house, but I did not think the guy went inside.  He had to be somewhere in that area hiding.  And almost as soon as I had the thought, I saw a figure explode out of the bushes and sprint down the street.  One of the cops ran after him while the other jumped back into his cruiser and accelerated after his partner.  The night came alive with sirens and chaos.  Police cars from every direction.  Officers running.  One police vehicle, lights and sirens blazing, came down the street with two officers inside and two sitting on the trunk lid with one holding a shotgun.

My wife caught up with me at this point and told me to get back to our house before I got hurt.  We had turned to go back when a police car rounded the corner and nearly clipped us.  We jumped over the curb onto the sidewalk to avoid the vehicle.  I realized I was breathing heavily and needed a moment to recover.  A police car pulled to the curb across the street from us and we heard the broadcast.  The units up the street had the suspect in custody, but now, the other officers were to fan out and look for the gun and the drugs he threw into the bushes as he was being chased.  The guy had a gun??!!!  What was I thinking??!!

We made a beeline back to our apartment and locked the door.  I suddenly was not so keen on being a witness to an armed suspect running through our neighborhood.

I was helping a student this week with her paper on the Los Angeles Police Department’s use of force and officer involved shooting policies.  Specifically, she was analyzing how the department’s incidents have been impacted by the wearing of body cameras.  The LAPD now releases carefully edited incidents where officers used deadly force or were subjected to assaults requiring a lethal, or a non-lethal response in the field.  We watched in spellbound, rapt attention as we literally went on calls with the officers in the field and saw exactly what they were experiencing and the confusion and chaos that they often walked into.

One incident was catalogued as NRF046-18, and occurred when officers began chasing a domestic violence suspect who had already shot his grandmother seven times and wounded his girlfriend.  The suspect, Gene Evins Atkins, led police on a high speed chase from south central Los Angeles to Silver Lake where he crashed into a light pole outside a Trader Joe’s Market.  He ran from his vehicle while firing at pursuing officers, who returned fire.  He went inside the market, took hostages, and engaged in a standoff with police.  During the shootout, a police officer’s bullet struck and killed the manager of the Trader Joe’s.  Eventually, Atkins was taken into custody and the hostages were released. (View the video below)

What becomes apparent immediately when we watched it was that the cops were crazy for firing at the suspect on a crowded street with other cars, pedestrians, shoppers, and people in nearby businesses.  It is a miracle no one else was hit.  The suspect needed to be stopped, and if the officers did not fire their weapons, Atkins would have continued to fire his.  But what makes these videos so valuable is that they demonstrate how officers often have to make split-second decisions that involve life and death.  We sat in my office watching and analyzing the cops' and the suspect’s actions for over an hour.  It is very easy, in retrospect with plenty of time, to say this or that should not have happened.  When officers have only seconds to decide, it is sheer luck that things go well, and most of the time, they don’t, leading people to be injured or killed.

We hear the cliches:  the camera never lies.  Truth is subjective.  Each witness has a slightly different, or sometimes radically different view of an incident.  When watching a number of these videos, it is interesting how there is, of course, a truth about what happened.  However, the camera does not always catch the entire incident, even when it is pointed right at the action.  In several of these videos, the crime is just out of sight, or the perp is not in frame or the film is jerky and blurry.  In the Trader Joe’s incident, the camera from the officer who was driving captures the steering wheel through most of the chase, although we can hear the dialogue between the two officers and the radio traffic.

Then, what must also be counted in, is the adrenaline.  Life and death, bullets flying, cars, people—sheer panic and cacophony.  Can one be trained to shut all of that out and operate in a way that results in a positive outcome?  There are too many variables, too many outcomes.  One trains, but then there is the wildcard that must be taken into account.  The unpredictability of human behavior, especially in the flight or fight moment.

On television and in film, we see things unfold in violence that is cinematic and, maybe not during the incident itself, but in its outcome, clear.  The bad guys are bad and the good guys are good.  When people are shot, they drop.  Or worse, if people are shot, they are shot repeatedly and keep running and running and running.  In real life, on these videos, some people get shot and seem to have little reaction.  Very few drop dead unless they are hit in the head.  Even if someone takes a bullet to the heart, he or she can keep going and still be dangerous.  My father used to tell me that a dying rattlesnake is sometimes more dangerous than a live one.  Why?  Because a live one wants to avoid humans and get away; a dying snake has reflexes and nothing to lose.  If the snake is going down, he will take as many of these human creatures as he can with him.

In the street, the cops do not know who is good or who is bad at a scene.  When those officers nearly ran us down, my first thought was, they do not know if I am the suspect or is he hiding in the dark waiting to pick them off.  In short, it is easy to quarterback the situation on film with plenty of time for analysis; it is quite another thing to enter a situation where literally everyone may be an enemy.  This is why officers who confront shooters in crowded schools and malls do an incredible job:  they must save people and eliminate the shooter without knowing, exactly, who is who.  If they kill the right guy, we cheer them on and hail them as heroes.  If they accidentally kill the wrong people, or, god forbid, hesitate, we excoriate them, maybe even prosecute them for their decisions made under extreme duress and in combat situations.  Policing an American city is no different these days from being in combat—weapons, tactics, ammunition, friendlies and enemies—it is the same.  So here in an urban city in 21^st century America, we must prepare for urban warfare.  That is not a comfortable thought.

Earlier this year, the story broke in our local press about the military and Homeland Security conducting drills in downtown Los Angeles to prepare for such urban warfare.  Helicopters would sweep over the downtown area and soldiers would repel from the aircraft down to the tops of buildings.  It is not an understatement to say I was terrified and saw only the malevolence and the threat in this “simulated action.”  What was my country preparing to do to its citizens?

I was frightened and disturbed but conflicted as well.  If my loved ones were at school, or the mall, or taking a walk in their neighborhood, I would want them to be protected.  I would want officers to confront the danger within seconds.  Therein lies the problem:  we can give police officers tanks and AR-15s, we can scan people and thoroughly search them at sporting events and airports; I would want them to be safe, even if that meant locking them up in a secure area or depriving them of their civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, but it is never that simple.  It is never that clear.  It is never, in short, safe.  It all boils down to a split-second decision—pull the trigger, don’t pull the trigger.  Life and death.  All in a moment.