report. Failure at any one of these three steps can really hurt you.
Making good decisions has two different meanings. Most officers, most of the time, make good decisions because they are good people. That holds true for anyone. When a decision must be made in a split second that decision will be based on who you are. Somewhere in the balance of fear and internal ethics, the person will make a decision (or fail to make a decision). Good, ethical people make good, ethical decisions.
Good decision-making is also a product of training, experience, and good policy. As much as officers need to be taught how to drive in an emergency, how to shoot, how to preserve evidence, and a thousand other things, they also have to be taught how to think, how to prioritize what they see, and how to make decisions. This will all be refined and expanded with experience.
Good policy is critical as well. One private company that regularly deals with violent mentally ill people has decided that they can’t be sued for hugging. The company has made it policy that the only self-defense technique allowed is to hug the attacker until he or she calms down. The environment is not designed for security and the clients have access to a number of things that can be altered to become weapons. Hugging someone trying to stab you is one of the less effective options. A bad policy, and this is a very bad policy, can put the employee in the position of following the rules or dying.
Carrying out your decisions properly is a matter of training. Knowing what to do is not the same as knowing how to do it. As an example, an agency that allows punching in their force continuum must train the officers in how to punch, or they will be sending officers to the hospital with broken hands. That violates the first golden rule.
Then, whatever your decision and action, you must write it well. You must be able to explain to your peers, superiors, and, if necessary, a jury exactly what you did; why you did it; and why it was the best option. Federal Air Marshall Guthrie says, “Your report can’t make a bad shoot good, but it can make a good shoot bad.”
No matter how much you twist or massage the words of your report, you can’t turn a bad decision into a good decision. Maybe you can fool some people, but it is still a bad decision. Like polishing a turd, it still stinks.
A bad report can sink you. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason can change a heroic act to a crime. “He was going to hit the baby with the hammer so I shot him,” is justified. “He was an ass, so I shot him,” is homicide.
Using a higher level of force might require explaining why a lower level of force would not have worked: “I was too far away to tackle the suspect before he hit the baby with the hammer. I had no choice but to fire my weapon.”
Make a good decision. Execute it properly. Write a good report.
The Three Golden Rules
1. You and your partners go home safely at the end of each and every shift
2. The criminal goes to jail
3. Liability free
Let’s say you, as a citizen, see someone in your front yard, acting strangely, staring and shouting and singing songs about John Lennon and Satan. Instead of calling 911, you go out on your front porch and yell, “Hey! What are you doing? Get out of my yard!” The Emotionally Disturbed Person (EDP) takes off and runs.
As a citizen, you’ve solved the problem. He may be in somebody else’s yard, but he’s not in yours. You aren’t responsible for him or for his actions.
As an officer, you have a duty to act. This can be really specific or really vague, depending on the policies of an individual agency and current tactical training. Once an issue comes to the officer’s attention, the officer is not only responsible for what he does, but for what happens if he chooses to do nothing.
Crazy guy runs and leaves a citizen’s yard because the citizen yelled. Fine. Crazy guy then slaughters a few people at the neighbor’s house: No liability or responsibility to the citizen.
The officer has to think of consequences—crazy, running guy might launch himself in front of a bus. Or hurt someone else. Or be wanted for a previous crime. Or desperately need psychiatric meds.
This is just an example, but the officer will respond to clues inherent in the scenario. Most people don’t run at the approach of an officer, hence it’s reasonable to believe that if someone runs, there is a reason. The subject might have a mental stability issue, in which case the officer may need to get medical help. Or the runner may have a warrant out for his arrest (no one wants to be the officer/agency who let a wanted felon go because they didn’t take the time to check for warrants). It may be because he has weapons or drugs on him that he is afraid they will find…
So the officer chases, and it is reasonable. Furthermore, if he wants to do the job, he has no choice. Many of the disconnects between police and citizen perceptions of force incidents center here. The citizen asks if the force was really necessary.
For a citizen, it wouldn’t have been necessary. Citizens aren’t required or expected to rush toward danger. Citizens are not responsible for the safety of the people around them and citizens, usually, can’t be censured or disciplined if they fail to stop someone else’s bad acts.
If a man with a knife runs toward an occupied house, the citizen has no responsibility to the people inside. An officer does and may need to make a choice to shoot a man in the back and live with the consequences of that choice…or to not shoot him and live with the possibility that the threat might kill children in the house.
There are no perfect answers in most tense situations. There are few, if any solutions where all parties involved are going to walk away with a smile in their hearts. Sometimes there aren’t even good answers. Sometimes there will be orphans. The officer’s duty in those situations is to try to choose the least bad answer.
To call a decision ‘bad’ we must have an alternate answer that we are sure would have resulted in less tragedy.
This is not a choice that a citizen is likely ever to make. It is one that officers have made. And they have had to live with the consequences. It is nothing short of choosing between nightmares—you will either live with the consequences of your actions or the consequences of your inaction. You will never know if the other choice would have been better or worse.
Not every police decision involves life or death. The officer needs skills that cover everything from mediation and calming down enraged EDPs to hand-to-hand skills, hand weapons, chemical sprays, and firearms.
Because of the duty to act, officers need skills that rarely enter into civilian self-defense. The things that can be handled with a wristlock or an escort hold are also the situations that a citizen can likely avoid.
Not only do officers need high-end self-defense skills and are more likely to use these skills than most civilians, they need an entirely separate set of skills for defending a third party or breaking up a fight.
Duty to act not only puts more moral pressure on the officer, exposing him or her to ugly, no-win situations, but also increases the complexity of those possible situations. It requires a broader base of skills than are needed by people who can choose to simply leave.
