heavily accented and slurred English, “Shoot me!”
Now I know that in the movies and on television, knives are not really considered a threat. The hero usually kicks the knife out of the bad guys hand or grabs the hand with knife and twists it until the knife falls out. These “Hollywood encounters” do a great disservice to those in Law Enforcement. If an officer has to shoot someone who attacks them with a knife, they are often second guessed by the press and citizen advocate groups, none of which have ever been in a deadly encounter with someone who wanted to kill them.
I have been involved in some type of martial arts for most of my life and am proficient with empty hand strikes, kicks, joint locks, pressure points and many types of weapons. In a real encounter, however, I am not about to fight someone armed with a knife. If you have ever seen anyone carved up by someone who is proficient with a knife, you will understand why Jay and I were about to shoot this drunk, suicidal Korean.
As the family members continued to scream in Korean over Jay’s shoulder, I knew he was going to have a tougher time making a shot. He was being jostled as the two sons and the wife tried get around him. Jay was using his body, trying to shield the family from getting in the way. However, I knew that it was a matter of seconds before Jay was going to be forced to fire his Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol.
I had backed up against a wall and slid sideways down a few feet to get a better angle. I was now to the side of suicidal man. Because of Jay’s position, I knew that it would be better if I took the shot. I raised my Smith & Wesson .45 caliber pistol and put the front sight on the man’s right ear and started to squeeze the trigger. The man with the knife was less than fifteen feet away, much too close. He continued to shuffle towards us pleading, “Shoot me!”
As the hammer was coming back on my double action, semi-
automatic pistol, I realized for the first time, that the Korean man did not know I existed. His attention was fixed completely on Jay. Maybe he felt that it was more honorable to be killed by a United States Marine than by his own hand. Unless he turned to his right, the suicidal man would walk right by me.
I observed all of this in a split second. I released the trigger of my pistol and holstered it. I drew my police baton or “nightstick.” I knew I was going against the Police Tactics Manual, but I was willing to try one time to disarm the guy. Jay and I both knew we would have been completely justified in shooting this guy. In that split second, however, I thought maybe we could avoid killing him. Justified or not, shooting him would create a lot of emotional trauma for us, the Korean family, and would mean a lot of paperwork.
The man’s right side was to me and the large knife was in his right hand. He had the knife raised and pointing at Jay. The family was still screaming in Korean and Jay was still yelling at him to drop the knife but I had blocked it out. I knew Jay was getting ready to shoot so I needed to act fast. I stepped forward and in one motion, raised my nightstick and brought it crashing down on the suicidal man’s right forearm. I hit him just as hard as I could, knowing that if I missed or did not disarm him, I could slide out of the way and let Jay shoot him.
When the nightstick smashed into the man’s forearm, the knife went flying across the living room. I wasn’t about to give him a chance to retrieve it so I dropped the nightstick behind me and reached over and grabbed the guy behind the neck with my right hand. I then pulled forward on the man’s neck and used my right leg to kick his legs in the opposite direction. The result was that the Korean was slammed down hard to the floor on his face. I dropped both knees into his back. Jay had responded immediately to my nightstick strike. As soon as the knife was out of the man’s hand, he was holstering his pistol and stepping in. He followed my lead and dropped onto the man’s back so that we could keep him pinned to the floor long enough to get him handcuffed.
Now Jay and I are both big boys. I am about six foot two and, at the time was about two hundred and twenty pounds out of uniform. With all of my equipment on, I tipped the scales at about two hundred and forty pounds. Jay is about six foot one and outweighs me by about twenty pounds. With us on this guy’s back, he wasn’t going anywhere. He struggled a bit as we tried to get him handcuffed but we got him secured. Then we both just sat there for a minute staring at each other and catching our breaths, knowing how close we had been to killing this man.
Jay now had a criminal charge (Aggravated Assault on Police Officers) and took the man to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation and involuntary committal. About a week later, Jay got a phone call from one of the suicidal man’s sons. Jay asked him how his father was. He said, “Well, his right forearm is broken and he is in a cast. He is going to have to have back surgery in the next few weeks from where you guys jumped on his back. He has several vertebrae that are messed up.” Jay did not like where this conversation was going. He thought that the next thing he was going to hear is that we were going to be sued.
Instead, the young Korean man continued, “But please don’t worry about all of that. It is okay. I want to thank you for not killing my father. I know you could have but instead, chose to use other means to get him the help that he needed. These injuries will heal. I am sorry that you had to see my father in that condition. He is a good man.” Jay thanked the young man for his call. Officer Jay received the Departmental Officer of the Month Award for this incident. I received a Letter of Commendation for my part.
This encounter drove home to me more clearly than ever before the necessity of good, consistent training. In a physical confrontation, most techniques do not work like we intend them to. I know that is hard to believe because Jack Bauer always lands his punch or kick on television, but in real life, it is just as common to miss or to have the technique not work. I was very fortunate in this situation that the two techniques that I used, the baton strike and the leg sweep, worked perfectly and allowed us to save a life rather than take one.
2
Police Academy
I entered the Police Academy in early 1984. My wife, Annie, and I had just spent a year in Ghana, West Africa doing missionary work. Living in Africa was a tremendous experience but the hot climate and lack of good, fattening American food had me looking like a six foot two, one hundred and sixty pound scarecrow. I also had long hair and a beard. When I reported for duty to the Police Academy, these were gone and I looked presentable. I had just turned twenty one years of age.
I was one of the twenty recruits in Gwinnett Police Academy Number 16. It would be almost four months before we would graduate and be “real” police officers. The Academy was run somewhat like a military boot camp. Our lead instructor, Officer Hal, had been a drill sergeant in the army and he liked to remind us of that. Every day included a lot of PT (Physical Training). We ran at least two miles every day and sometimes as many as four or five. We did pushups, sit ups, and all kinds of other calisthenics. We also had a sadistic obstacle course that we had to run regularly.
This PT had its desired effect. When the academy was over, I was a solid one hundred and eighty pounds. It would not be until a few years later that I started lifting weights seriously and putting on some more muscular size and strength. But for the time being, I would be ready for life on the street.
The core of the Police Academy was the classroom training. A few of the classes made a lasting impact on us. We had several weeks of Criminal Procedures, Criminal Law, and Traffic Law. These were three very important blocks of instruction and the person they had to teach it to us was a legend in the Georgia law enforcement community.
Tate Brown quickly became our favorite instructor. He was delightfully profane, unabashedly irreverent, and politically incorrect on a scale that would prevent him from even entering the Police Training Center today, much less teach there. He had been in law enforcement in several different agencies for close to thirty years. At the time he taught my class, he was working in some capacity for the governor.
