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A plainclothes
officer is being slashed in the face and neck during a ground
fight with a knife-wielding suspect. Under life-threatening
attack, he hands his gun to another officer because "he's afraid
he'll discharge the weapon accidentally" during the struggle.
"He gets praised by the media for 'showing restraint,' but what
he did makes my skin crawl," Chudwin declares. "Why didn't he
shove the muzzle in the suspect's eye and pull the trigger?"
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Another
officer responds to a man-with-a-gun call at a food mart, sees
the suspect with a gun in hand but stays in her patrol car. The
suspect grabs a citizen whom he forces to the ground at
gunpoint. The officer fails to intervene. The suspect murders
the captive by shooting him in the head. Still no action by the
officer beyond "officially observing." Responding backup finally
kills the offender. A disturbing footnote to this event, Chudwin
says, "is that some of her peers feel the first officer did
nothing wrong." |
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An offender
who has murdered his girlfriend is outdoors in a residential
neighborhood firing a gun randomly. He's surrounded by SWAT but
the officers take no action other than trying to maintain a
loose perimeter, even when he points his revolver directly at
them. The standoff drags on through many threats to police and
public until he eventually is shot when he closes in on an
officer and points the gun at him. When Chudwin asks the
officers why they didn't fire earlier, they explain: "Our
commander told us not to shoot him." "An outrage!" Chudwin
declares. "If you're putting an offender at the top of the list
for safety, then you have your priorities screwed up. Why are we
catering to the person who created the problem?"
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SWAT officers
are offered rapid deployment training by a tactical organization
but back away from the concept because they consider it "too
dangerous." "We don't run into the muzzle of a machine gun,"
Chudwin chides, "but we do run into danger every day, and we
should be prepared to do it." |
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An active
shooter is inside a fast-food restaurant killing people. A SWAT
team is ready to make entry or to fire through glass to take him
out. A commander en route but 10 miles out orders the officers
to stand down until he gets there....A commanding officer
instructs his street personnel, "You can't shoot at anyone until
you are shot at first".... A chief states that anyone who can't
control an aggressive offender with a knife from 5 to 7 feet
away without using deadly force should not be a police
officer-all examples of "lunacy," Chudwin says.
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"That kind of
thinking can put you in a black hole you can't get out of. This is
the culture we have to get away from. There is no obligation for you
to be injured, wounded or murdered" rather than shooting to stop a
lethal threat.
Chudwin made clear
that he is not advocating the development of rogue officers who
pursue vigilante missions on the street. But he does feel that
officers and agencies should embrace a greater willingness and
readiness to use lawful deadly force in appropriate circumstances.
"Predators are out
there, not afraid of us, willing to attack us," said Chudwin, who
has had two friends who were murdered on the job. "But officers
often back away from aggressively finishing the fight."
Part of the
problem, he suggested, is unrealistic training that teaches officers
to rely on tactics and equipment that in many real-life
confrontations don't work.
Field experience
has well established that pepper spray, for example, "won't work
against people who are committed and willing to fight to the death."
Yet he showed dramatic video of a determined naked man moving
threateningly down a city street with a knife after having cut off
his own penis. Responding officers attempted-futilely-to control him
with endless verbal commands and bursts of OC. Their solution
ultimately was to risk their own safety by dog-piling him.
Why waste time and
heighten your personal risk "by trying something that cannot work,
like pain compliance against a crackhead who can't feel pain?"
Chudwin asked. "Why create false expectations of success?"
He deplored the
tendency, again often reinforced in training, to over-verbalize.
"Show me a Supreme Court case or statute that says you must give
verbal warning before using deadly force," Chudwin challenged.
"There isn't one.
"It's not
necessary to talk to somebody when they're trying to murder you. You
can do it, but there's no legal obligation to and tactically it's
not desirable. There are some offenders you simply can't negotiate
with. Yet officers want to take things to the last instant because
they have imprinted in their mind 'I don't want to shoot.'"
Reacting properly
in threat situations depends on having the right mind-set, Chudwin
stressed. "When you go out on the street, the first thing you say
when you get in your patrol car should not be, 'Oh, God, I might get
sued today.' You really have nothing personally to fear from
liability when you follow law, policy and procedure. But fear of
liability has led to the murders of police officers.
"If you're more
concerned about getting sued than getting murdered, you can't do the
job like it needs to be done. You're a threat to yourself and to
others."
Regarding deadly
force, "you have to know what you can do and when you can do it, and
be prepared to do it immediately, without hesitation. If you fail
any part of this equation, you will fail on the street."
The willingness to
emphatically stop a life threat needs to be part of your mind-set
off duty as well as on, Chudwin reminded. "Only 25 per cent of
officers in some areas carry off duty, and then they carry no extra
ammunition," he said in disbelief.
"Have some firearm
on you always. You will be some place someday with your family and
some antisocial s.o.b. will come up to you and want to cut your
throat and take your children away-and you're not going to let him.
"Remember, there
is no coming back from the dead. If you understand that, you will
come home at night. You may be a little battered but you won't be
full of holes because you gave some predator verbal commands rather
than shoot him."
