Shoot Second

Shoot Second

They sat in four very evenly spaced rows consisting of five two person tables in a high school chemistry room like setting. The one exception was that the thick tabletops were white.  All computer tablets were to be turned off by 7:30 PM sharp, when Captain Harris would address the group with their beginning shift briefing. This was a carefully selected group set to run main patrols overnights from Wednesday through Saturday over the next ten-week shift cycle while most of the district 28 Police Department were assigned to riot control downtown and in the surrounding suburbs.

           “We’re living in a war zone right now boys and you all luckily get to focus on the real ‘Serve and Protect’ work, while most of your brothers have to keep the protesters in check every day”. Captain Harris was a veteran Officer nearing retirement with a belly that had grown to borderline acceptability. “This will pass, but not before your next rotation. For the time being you will concentrate on improving our clean arrests statistics and keeping our people safe outside of the silliness going on in those other areas. All of you know that since one of ours shot that kid who pulled out a cell phone while he was evading two of your brothers, a lot of public heat has come down on us. Since then, Chief Holland has been on TV way too much and now the Governor is even talking about us in the news daily. In response, the Chief has started a new sub department, Impact Facts, that will work between districts and be powered by analytics.  They will be advising us on how we go about our business going forward. The goal now is to prove that we do good police work every day.” Cpt. Harris flipped over a page on his clip board and took a deep breath. "I'd like to introduce you to Lt. Dan Hansen. He is from Impact Facts and will be joining us each week to review our conduct and share insights into our performance. Dan started in district 14 and now works out of central. He has spent time in homicide and earned a degree in statistical analysis a few years back, Dan”. The Cpt. marched to the side of the room and motioned with an outstretched arm for to the Lt. to take the thin wooden podium. 

           “Thank you, Captain Harris, and good evening to you all. We’re still the good guys. It doesn’t matter what the media and all those people out there are saying, those aren’t the voices that matter. It’s the quiet voices that we keep safe every day that matter”. Lt. Hansen stood tall and wore small rectangular lenses with transparent frames while in a classroom setting. His hair was short and neat. He dimmed the lights and started a slide show presentation. “Gentlemen, you are the front line defense responsible for keeping this city’s law-abiding citizens safe from the many thugs and drug dealers that have zero regard for the very same citizens that are your brothers, family and neighbors.”

           He gently pulled his right index finger to his lips and clicked to the next slide with the remote in his left hand. “I’ve pulled together some important stats on the city’s officers reaction time for each shooting event over the last three years, they haven’t changed much overall. I wanted to look deeper though.” He advanced to a slide that showed the average shoot time with a white assailant was 2.2 seconds and was 0.3 seconds when the assailant was black. “Can anyone explain to me why there is such a difference here and what we need to do to fix it”?

            A man in the front row spoke up “It’s hard with these armed bangers in streets. You don’t know who’s ready shoot or not”. The Lt. paused for a moment. “I know where you’re coming from, but no. The problem is that our reaction time is good there, very good with the blacks. It must get better with the whites. These tweakers out there don’t think about consequences and are a real danger in confrontational situations. The 2.2 needs to come down. The standard that you’ve all been trained to is a half second”. 

David Jackson, who’s real first name was Tyreke (he went by his middle name), had a sudden vision that the room was filled with pointed white hoods with a pointed red hood at the front. He began to sweat with anger. When he was on riot control duty, he was often called a trader, among worse names, by people that looked like him. In this room, he was barely seen at all. 

Thomas Kinkaid was David’s partner and table mate tonight. Not tall or short, he had a thick neck and attentive blue eyes. His father was Thomas senior, known as “Tommie”, who rose to Lieutenant but stayed on street patrol through early retirement after a shooting incident. It was judged to be a clean shooting after arbitration. A black youth died, and he was offered retirement back then before the vest cameras were required.

Thomas saw the struggle in David’s face and whispered with a stoic face “It’s okay, we’re here to make this better”. David gave him a wide-eyed look “Man… we’re a long way off”.

After an ending speech from Lt. Hansen about keeping their eyes and ears open and how they were the best the city had, they were all off to their patrol cars for duty.

     Nothing of note happened over the first few nights.  Much of the criminal activity was seen in the protest/riot areas of the city. Mostly just minority owned businesses located on the main city streets were looted and sometimes even burned. They would be the Fire Department’s problem after the police captured any suspects. 

     Late Saturday night, Thomas got a call on a gas station robbery in progress. The cherries were lit up on the top of the squad car. He arrived just in time to see a black suspect running out of the Kum and Go gas station/ethic all night grocery. Sirens on, he followed the suspect into an alley, where he darted between buildings and made it into a residential area. Thomas parked his cruiser when got within a hundred feet of the suspect and witnessed him jumping fences between back yards. Adrenaline rushing, he was gaining ground on the suspect and cornered him against a wall intersection behind a dinged up blue dumpster where two low-income housing buildings met. He hollered “FREEZE, POLICE” as he pulled his side arm and pointed firmly at the edge of the dumpster where his target was hiding. The suspect stayed hidden for long seconds. Suddenly, he stood up and pulled something from his back pocket and pointed it at Thomas. It was very dark; the object reflected off the dim yellow streetlights. Thomas’ heartbeat sped up as he placed his wide finger on the trigger of his Glock 19 pistol, he thought ‘take a full second, a shoot second’. He did and noticed that the young man had only pulled out a cell phone and was trying to surrender while raising both hands. He held up the phone with the pointed camera recording Thomas. Thomas marched slowly forward, insisting that he put down the phone and lay face down on the ground. He read him his Miranda rights and made a clean arrest.

The next Wednesday, the group was again led by Lt. Hansen. He started with “good week boys, no shootings and only one close encounter. Thomas, your reaction time in this case was 1.2 seconds, our department average is 0.8, what caused the delay?”. Thomas was confident and stood up to answer “Yes, I did take a moment to act. This was a case where the assailant was obviously scared and, I believe, was aware of current events. I think he knew that tensions were high in the city right now and when he realized he was caught, he just wanted to document with his phone. I gave him the benefit of the doubt before making the decision to use force”. 

The Lieutenant looked at Thomas in silence for a few seconds with contempt. “Gentlemen, that moment that Officer Kincaid decided to take could very well have cost him his life. The loss of a husband. The loss of a father to a small child. This bravery is considered commendable in some circles. However, in this circle, we expect you to make decisions quickly and to shoot first, so that you stay alive to continue to protect your brothers and your families”. 

The meeting concluded with more statistics showing that it typically took a full two years of training before a patrolman was considered to be a trustworthy cop. It was important to keep the ones they have. 

           Thomas walked slowly down the neon lit hallway toward the parking garage with his friend David.  David waited until they were out of ear shot of their fellow officers “I think you were justified in taking a second. If we always shoot in hast, we’re going to keep making mistakes and keep killing black kids. The community is right to be pissed off. I’m pissed off. These are my people, our people”.  Thomas padded his right fist against the badge tacked on his bullet proof vest in front of his heart “We can change this, one shift at a time brother”.