Police shooting: 'by the book'

from The Oregonian, by Dana Tims


SUMMARY: Deadly force Experts say officers responded as they were trained to the knife-wielding teen
The shooting death of an 18-year-old man unfolded with Washington County sheriff's deputies following current training procedures, authorities say.

Though tragic, the officers' response was by the book, say law enforcement officers in Oregon and across the nation.

Anyone wielding a knife and standing within 25 feet of a police officer, as Lukus Glenn of the Tigard area was, is considered an imminent threat, according to uniformly accepted training principles.

An assailant can cover that distance in just over one second and sink a knife into an officer's chest before the officer can even draw a gun, police experts say.

"It appears to have been very much by the book," said Geoffrey Alpert, chairman and professor in the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina. "In this case, the use of deadly force to save people inside that house seems to have been reasonable."

But the Glenn shooting early Saturday has also raised questions anew whether current police training for use of deadly force is sufficient.

State Sen. Avel Gordly, whose bill addressing use of deadly force by law enforcement officers died in the last legislative session, said the training book may not be enough. She agreed that Glenn's death was a tragedy, but emphasized that increased training for police officers could help prevent such instances in the future.

"It's all about the training," Gordly said. "And the point is that barbers and hairdressers receive more training than our police officers."

Threat level

Police are trained to assess levels of threat and react based on that assessment, said Bob Charpentier, an Oregon State Police trooper assigned to the training section. Standard training says that you respond to a threat level with a level deemed one step higher on a seven-step "force matrix."

The first, or lowest step, is an officer's presence. It involves just showing up at a scene. The seventh entails use of deadly force against an assailant who is deemed imminently liable to kill or seriously injure either the officer or one or more bystanders.

In between are use of verbal commands; hands-on manipulation, such as grabbing an elbow to escort an assailant; use of chemical agents, such as pepper spray; empty-hand strikes, such as hooks or straight punches; and use of impacts weapons, including beanbags or Tasers.

In Glenn's case, deputies initially used loud verbal commands, telling him to drop the knife he was holding. When he refused, they shot him with non-lethal beanbags.When he then turned and started back into his house, where family members were looking on, deputies opened fire, hitting him multiple times and killing him.

Representatives of police agencies throughout the metro area were emphatic about not wanting to comment specifically about Glenn's death. But they spoke openly about their respective departments' training regimens, which for the most part come straight from textbooks taught nationwide on how and when force can be used by officers.

"The person representing the threat has the advantage because they dictate the amount of force to be used," said Lt. Jason Gates, public information officer for the Portland Police Bureau. "If that threat becomes imminent to the police officer or someone else, we have the obligation to neutralize that threat as best we can."

Unlike confrontational situations so often portrayed in movies or on television, police never try to shoot a weapon out of an assailant's hand or aim for an extremity, Charpentier said.

"In high-stress situations, the first thing to go out the window are the fine motor reflexes," he said. "That's why you have instances where many, many shots are fired and not a single one ends up hitting the target.

"We don't shoot to wound the person, and we don't shoot to kill the person," Charpentier continued. "We shoot to stop the threat. And the best way to do that is to shoot the center mass."

The aftermath

Sgt. Craig Hogman, who works in the Clark County Sheriff's Office, knows only too well the stress of a high-stakes confrontation. Fleeing bank robbers shot at his pursuing patrol car multiple times in 1997. After they crashed their vehicle and continued firing, deputies ended up killing two of the suspects and later captured the other.

Hogman said he never felt nervous or afraid during the confrontation itself. He credited long hours of training with preparing him for the ordeal. Only later, he said, did the enormity of the experience begin to take its toll.

"Until you've been out there, you just can't fathom the number of decisions you have to make in a split second," Hogman said.

Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University in Boston, was among the thousands of people who listened to the 9-1-1 call made by Lukus Glenn's mother to emergency dispatchers. It was clear, he said, that Glenn had committed "suicide by cop."

The challenge ahead, for police, will be persuading investigators that the knife Glenn possessed presented an imminent danger to family members in the house.

"If he had refused to lower a handgun or a rifle, there would have been little, if any, controversy as to proper police tactics," Levin said. "A review board will have to determine whether the pocket knife carried by the assailant was a realistic threat to the police or whether one of the officers reacted reflexively to his magnified perception of imminent danger."

Whether more training could have helped avoid the death appears likely to be debated.

As a legislator, Gordly helped institute increases in the amount of training all new Oregon law enforcement officers get, particularly as it relates to mental health issues.

But even with those increases, she said, the 16 weeks of academy training Oregon's law enforcement recruits will get starting in January --up from the current standard of 10 weeks --will still lag far behind the national average of 21 weeks.

"We need to focus on the amount and quality of training our officers are getting," she said. "These situations are going to happen, we know that. The more options we provide to law enforcement professionals, the more tools they'll have in the tool box."