critical incidents
I've long been bothered by the tendency of the media to
fret and commiserate with the family and friends of a perp who, through his own
meanness, recklessness or sheer stupidity, managed to get himself killed by
police. There is never any concern for the officer. It's as though cops are
natural-born killers by virtue of wearing the badge. They're not. I've seen
officers weep when telling me about a shooting that transpired years ago. It is,
as I believe Clint Eastwood once remarked, no small thing to kill a man.
I worked for weeks on this package, and it never would have
come together if not for the assistance of then-Acting Chief Lewis Harper and
Detective Michael Mines, who gave me access to everything surrounding a
righteous shooting that took place in College Park.
shootout at the wafflehouse
The man steps out of the darkness into the
Waffle House, a pair of white pantyhose pulled over his head, wrapped into a
ball and tied off on top.
He looks like someone bound for a costume party dressed as a
Vidalia onion. But in his right hand he's holding a black-and-silver pistol.
"Oh, no," a woman whispers.
"You know what this is," the man barks. "Give
it up!"
The restaurant falls deathly silent. The sizzle of the grill
becomes a roar.
It is 6:01 a.m. on Friday, June 4. The robber doesn't know it
yet, but he has made a bad mistake, the next to last of his life.
There's a cop in the back booth.
-------
In College Park, police work 12-hour
shifts, 6 to 6. It is hot and muggy on Bravo team's night watch, which began at
6 p.m. June 3 and ends officially at 6 the next morning. As a matter of
courtesy, officers arrive to start a shift well ahead of time, so those getting
off can deal with any leftover paperwork and still get away close to
the right time. The dispatcher announces "All Bravo units, 35" ---
return to the station --- around 5:50.
Ballistic vests are no longer as heavy as they once were, but
they are still terribly hot. Officer Derrick Shean, with no paperwork to catch
up on that morning, gratefully takes off his shirt and puts it on a hanger in
his extended-cab Ford Ranger pickup in the parking area beside the fire station.
With the sharp rip of separating Velcro tabs, he loosens his vest, pulls it over
his head and puts it on another hanger. Then he unstraps his duty belt and puts
it on the passenger seat. He has just shed about 8 pounds.
The black T-shirt is clammy on his back. Cranking up his
truck, Shean is looking forward to doing a few chores around home and getting
some sleep before coming back for the Saturday night watch.
On Virginia Avenue, he pulls into the Waffle House parking
lot. He had been there earlier in the morning, checking to make sure all was
well, and had promised to stop for coffee on his way home.
Shean, a stocky, muscular man of 28 who has always been a
cop, gets out of his truck and pulls his matte black Glock .40-caliber pistol
out of its holster. He sticks it in his pants at the small of his back.
When Shean enters the Waffle House, he is greeted by the
cook, Marc Parrish, several other employees used to seeing him and a couple of
the regulars. Waitress Tracey Ransom hands him a cup of coffee. He takes it to a
back booth and sits down facing the front of the restaurant.
Davene Teller, a young woman who used to work there, comes
back and sits across from Shean. Tammy Glenn, Parrish's girlfriend and a backup
cook, pulls up a chair beside the booth. There are 13 people in the place.
--------
At 6:01 a.m., Derrick Shean puts down the spoon with which he
had been stirring his coffee and reaches around to scratch his back. He hears
somebody gasp "Oh, no."
Looking up, Shean sees the gunman standing in front of the
cash register. He recognizes the pistol in his hand as a 9mm Ruger; the
protrusion on the trigger guard is a laser sight, but it isn't on. The gun is
waving from side to side and employees and patrons are staring at it as though
it is an angry rattlesnake.
"Give me the ------ money," the robber rasps, his
voice muffled by the pantyhose. He is desperate. He has 66 cents in his pocket
and an ATM receipt showing a bank balance of 75 cents.
"Don't look at me!" he screams.
Some of the customers lower their eyes and bow their heads.
Shean drops his right hand from the itch on his back to the
polymer grip of his Glock and slowly withdraws it, keeping it out of sight.
The robber pays no attention. He is becoming agitated.
He reaches out with his left arm and grabs a customer around
the neck, yanking him off his stool at the counter with the Ruger pressing at
the back of his head.
The customer, known to everyone as Smiley, says nothing.
Outside in the parking lot, his son is asleep in their truck.
Very slowly, Shean slides out of the booth into a crouch,
holding his gun with both hands, pointed at the floor. His attention is
concentrated entirely on the robber and the area immediately around and behind the gunman.
Shean has made up his mind. He will not let the gunman leave
with a hostage. Shean has always worked hard on his marksmanship and
gun-handling. He is calm and confident, running through possible scenarios. He
is waiting for an opening, a distraction.
"You don't gimme the money, I'm gonna kill this
-----," the robber yells, backing away.
At any Waffle House, the grill man is in charge. Parrish
locks eyes with Smiley briefly, then yells, "Just give him the money!"
Ransom steps forward, hits a key on the register, yanks out
the cash drawer and drops it on the counter.
The robber marches Smiley back to the counter and pushes him
aside. He grabs the black cash drawer, pulls it to his chest and backs toward
the door. Coins clatter to the floor.
"Don't nobody move!" he yells, his pistol waving
from side to side.
Shean has his opening. There is no one but the robber in his
line of fire. He rises to his feet and his training takes over. He brings his
left foot forward, his right arm outstretched with wrist and elbow locked,
supporting arm bowed, sighting down his gun arm.
"Police!" he screams.
The distance is about 12 feet, and the little hollow circle
on Shean's front sight is trained on the gunman's chest. His hands are steady.
He doesn't hear the commotion of people screaming and diving for cover.
Only Parrish remains standing. He wants to hit the floor but
his legs won't obey.
The robber makes his last mistake. Instead of dropping his
pistol, he swings it toward Shean.
Shean squeezes through the 5 pounds of pressure necessary to
break the Glock's trigger. The report is deafening. Less than two seconds have
passed since he got to his feet.
Police are trained not to shoot to kill, but to stop. Once
they open fire, they will continue to fire until the threat is gone. Shean needs
to take down the gunman without letting him get off a shot. A dozen terrified
bystanders are at risk. The cop continues pulling the trigger, bringing the
front sight back on target after each report.
He fires eight times, until the target drops below his
sights. At least six of the bullets find their mark. Some pierce the cash drawer
the man is clutching. It crashes to the floor. The robber is backing through the
door. Glass shatters all around him as one bullet after another finds its mark.
One round grazes his right chin, strikes his neck and pierces
his voice box. Another, its momentum almost stopped by something, perhaps the
door frame, barely penetrates the soft tissue of his abdomen. One strikes the
right side of his chest, cracks a rib, tears through his right lung and strikes
another rib.
A bullet hits his right chest, slides between ribs, pierces
his right lung, rips open his heart and punctures his left lung. His lungs
collapse. He cannot breathe. His heart is pumping blood into his chest cavity.
Flying glass rakes his right arm and another bullet hits the
back of his gun hand, in the web between thumb and forefinger, and exits at the
base of his thumb. The same slug may have left a graze on his side.
He turns, falling, and a bullet pierces his left upper back,
striking two ribs.
"Get down!" Shean yells. "Everybody
down." He can't see the gunman, and more importantly, he can't see the
Ruger. He approaches the shattered wall of the vestibule and sees the robber,
lying on his right side, soaked with blood, motionless. His hands are empty. The
Ruger is behind him, unfired. Shean, his own weapon still at the ready, kicks it
away.
"Call 911!" He yells, not taking his eyes off the
gunman. "Tell them Signal 63, Officer Shean." Signal 63, probably the
most universal police code, means "officer needs help." It is used
only in the gravest situations.
It is 6:02 a.m. Sirens wail in the distance. In the stunned
silence inside the Waffle House, the gunman --- later identified as Jonathan
Bartley --- dies. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, 08/22/99
"it's no small thing to kill a
man"
Until the night he killed a man who
attacked him with a knife, Salvatore Glibbery was one of New York's finest, a
decorated officer with a clear past and a bright future.
But that grim night four days after Christmas 1987 sent Sal
Glibbery into an emotional hell that ended last month, when he was found dead in
his car, a suicide.
Glibbery and his partner, both white New York uniform
officers, shot and killed a black man who attacked them with a knife.
The Rev. Al Sharpton led a racial hue-and-cry over the
killing. The police commissioner at the time said publicly that the officers
should have shown "more prudence." A grand jury absolved them of any
wrongdoing, and Glibbery's partner is still working. But legal exoneration did
Glibbery no good.
The police union helped him get a desk job, but in 1994 he
was returned, terrified, to the streets.
"On the way to work, in tears, he would sometimes close
his eyes while driving, testing how long he could go without opening them,"
a police psychologist wrote. "He hoped to hit a pole, but would open them
after a few seconds, worried about the possibility of hitting a family instead
of killing himself."
During one police call, he froze, trancelike, with his pistol
drawn. He lasted eight weeks on the street before seeking a disability
retirement
"I'm nothing anymore," he told his father.
Despite the macho image that law enforcement officers still
cultivate, most will readily agree that taking a life can have emotional
repercussions even under the best of circumstances. After psychiatrists studying
VietnamWar veterans identified Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, police agencies
began setting in place procedures to deal with the emotional backlash of
shootings and similar traumatic experiences, which they call Critical Incidents.
'What did I do wrong?'
In College Park, that meant that on June 4,
when off-duty College Park police Officer Derrick Shean shot and killed an armed
robber in a Waffle House restaurant, acting Chief Lewis Harper was on his way to
the Waffle House shooting scene within minutes. Harper was not there to
investigate, but to be with Shean.
Many smaller Georgia agencies bring in the GBI to investigate
their police shootings, but the state agency's investigations can take several
months.
The investigation of Shean's shooting was the first to be
handled by a team of officers from the south Fulton municipal agencies and the
district Attorney's office. Harper was instrumental in forming the southside
team after his department's last fatal shooting two years ago. Harper was
assistant chief then and watched helplessly while Officer Robert Bovell was
relegated to desk duty for six months, until the district attorney's office sent
word it would not prosecute him in the straightforward shooting.
Bovell remains bitter about that. "After four months, it
got to where I was in tears every day," he said. "Everybody was
telling me what I wanted to hear. Nobody was telling me the truth. I kept
thinking, 'What did I do wrong?' "
New gun eases anxiety
There is little formal training in Georgia to prepare an officer psychologically
for a deadly force situation or its aftermath.
One of the few experts specializing in the field is Dave
Grossman, a retired Army officer and psychologist and author of the seminal
study "On Killing." According to Grossman, the degree of affirmation
an officer receives from his supervisors, his peers, the public and the media
after a shooting is critical. And according to the experience of longtime
officers and the judgment of psychologists, the longer a good officer remains on
the shelf after a shooting, the more damaging it is to him.
In that respect, Shean's experience was much different than
Bovell's.
"Everybody was very supportive," Shean said.
"Chief Harper was with me every step of the way, telling me what to
expect." A sergeant took Shean's gun for routine
tests and gave him a temporary replacement. That simple act, Grossman said, was
significant. "It used to be that they just took an officer's gun and left
him feeling naked. Giving him a replacement on the spot," Grossman said, is
a gesture of affirmation more potent than any words.
After making his formal statement, Shean was sent home. Early
the following week, he attended a mandatory session with a city-appointed
psychologist. Exactly one week after the shooting, Derrick Shean was back on
patrol. He'd missed only two shifts.
He insists that he had none of the usual reality-altering
experiences during the shooting and none of the expected after-effects.
"It's unfortunate that I had to take a life," he said, "but
that's what I'm trained for. Nobody knows how you're going to react until it's
done. As long as God's OK with it, and I'm sure he is, then I'm OK."
Nightmares replay scene
Nancy Harvey, who counsels Atlanta police
and firefighters as part of the city's Bureau of Employee Assistance Services,
said there are always symptoms of stress after a Critical Incident.
"If they say they don't have any, I see that as a
symptom, too, the machismo thing," she said.
Grossman, however, said the keys to dealing with any
emotional by-products of a shooting are "rationalization and
acceptance" of the event.
"If you spend enough time preparing yourself mentally for the possibility
of deadly force, then you may have done the rationalization and acceptance ahead
of time," he said.
Harvey and Grossman said the fact that Shean had precious
seconds to decide his course of action and picked his own moment to act likely
eased his reactions. Additionally, Shean never saw the face of the man he killed
until much later, when he reviewed crime scene photos. This depersonalizes the
incident and helps to minimize the effect of the shooting on an officer.
Fulton County Officer Greg Shelton, 28, didn't have those
advantages. In April 1996, when he had been patrolling on his own for only a few
months, he answered a domestic call on Butner Road.
Shelton and his backup, a more experienced officer who has
since retired, were confronted by a man marching a woman out on the lawn with
his left hand gripping her hair. His right hand was behind his back.
"We were 10 or 12 feet away from them when he brought up
his right hand with a little .32 pistol, put it to the back of the woman's head
and fired twice," Shelton recalled. "She crumpled."
Both officers were screaming at the man to drop the gun but
he raised it toward them.
The full effects of a phenomenon called tachypsyche, a
product of grossly elevated heart rate and the primitive "fight or
flight" reflex, welled up in Shelton.
Time slowed to a crawl. His vision narrowed to a tunnel just
big enough to encompass the gunman. As if he was only a witness, he watched his
9 mm Beretta come up to point of aim. He saw flash after flash bloom slowly from
the muzzle, but heard nothing. He has no recollection of consciously drawing his
weapon or firing.
Hit numerous times, the man went down. When the shooting
stopped, Shelton realized he had moved 20 feet to cover behind his car. He
couldn't remember moving at all.
The gunman survived. More amazingly, so did the woman.
Fulton County sent Shelton to two counseling sessions.
"It was the first time I was able to get it all out," he said.
"Also, it prepared me for what came later."
What came later were nightmares. "I would replay the entire shooting just
as it happened, right up to the point of shooting," he said. "In the
nightmares, though, my gun wouldn't fire."
The nightmares ended after a time, and Shelton said he has
had no further symptoms.
Problems come later
A counselor is called immediately when
Atlanta officers are involved in Critical Incidents. When she is on call, Harvey
said, she is on hand when they make their formal statement, and spends a little
time alone with them at that point.
"You don't see much right away," she said.
"They articulate pretty well. They're very quiet, very calm and subdued.
They may be a little anxious over what will happen to them.
"Then, after some time has elapsed, a matter of days,
they may say they haven't been able to sleep too well, or they can't eat, or
they just aren't coping as well. They may be having flashbacks."
When she sees an officer for mandatory counseling after a
killing, Harvey said, she always tells him or her that "when you come back
on duty, I want to do a shift with you." She rides a full shift with the
officer, giving him a chance to talk further with her --- and to make it clear
that she cares.
Harvey said not all of her cases involve counseling an
officer who had to kill.
A week after the killing of an Atlanta officer, "I got a
call from a precinct commander. An officer who was with him when he was shot,
had broken down in the office." Harvey said it was delayed stress reaction
due to intense grief, and counseling and time off helped the officer get back to
normal.
Grossman said positive reinforcement was a strong factor in
Shean's favor. A few days after the shooting, the College Park City Council
proclaimed him an official hero.
Shean insisted he was unimpressed. "I was just doing my
job. I couldn't let a criminal of this nature walk away. It wasn't like he was a
shoplifter."
The resolution proclaiming Shean a hero, however, embittered
Bovell even further. Bovell shot and killed an armed robber who tried to escape
out the back door of an Old National Highway restaurant. It was a simple
shooting: Bovell told the man to drop his weapon, the man raised it toward
Bovell, and died.
Bovell, who is black, said he feels the lack of official
recognition in his case was "a racial thing."
Bovell said that after the shooting, he replayed the scene
"frame by frame" in nightmares that woke him in a cold sweat. They
went away eventually, he said, and while he has not been faced with another
possible deadly force incident, he is certain he can handle it.
Shean believes he can, too. "If I've got to do it again
tonight, I'll do it," he said. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
Aug. 22, 1999
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