Police training seems to ensure fatal outcomes

from The Oregonian, by Andy Parker


Ray O'Driscoll's the first to say he's nothing special, just a retired guy with a new hammock and some Old World views of cop work.
He and his wife, Claudia, live in the hills out beyond Colton, a place where thick fingers of moss drip from tree limbs and backyards spill seamlessly into sprawling federal forests.

They moved to Oregon 32 years ago from the Bay Area. They'd tired of all the congestion. And after 12 years of cop work in cities outside San Francisco, Ray was ready for a change.

After a variety of jobs, he spent his last years before retirement as Oregon City's code compliance officer.

During his years as a police officer, O'Driscoll never shot anybody. But he knows what it feels like to break up a bar brawl and wake up later trying to recall what kind of beer bottle hit you.

It was just part of the job, he says, a job where you get paid to take necessary risks. No risks, no gain.

It's a concept he believes is foreign to today's police training.

O'Driscoll likes cops. He's torn about speaking out because he knows how tough the work is. He knows most police officers, even those who kill someone, are just hard-working guys doing what they've been trained to do.

And that's precisely the problem.

In his years of police work in the Bay Area, he knew some cops who shot bad guys, some who got shot. But back in the 1960s and '70s, he says, cops were taught to use their 2-foot-long batons as a defensive tool to defuse potentially violent situations.

It didn't always work. Sometimes you got hurt. But these days, most cops don't even carry batons. It's as if it's all designed so police officers never have to touch anyone and rarely put themselves at risk, he said. And that is a sure way to guarantee more fatal endings to routine incidents.

O'Driscoll wrote a letter to the editor last week about the fatal police shooting of an 18-year-old Tigard man. His letter was responding to a Portland police officer who wrote: "I seriously doubt anyone who is being critical of the Lukus Glenn slaying has ever had to face that kind of situation."

In his response, O'Driscoll wrote, "An officer who has taken the step to end another person's life is hardly an expert on other possible options. . . . And I do believe that three officers facing a drunk teenager with a 3-inch knife could have disarmed him."

To be clear, O'Driscoll doesn't believe his own time as a cop makes him an expert on anything. But it arms him with enough experience to ask reasonable questions that deserve reasonable answers.

We can all recite the outcome of any police-involved shooting:

The internal investigation that finds police followed regulations and clears officers of any wrongdoing.

The grand jury that follows the recommendation of the district attorney and finds no crime has occurred.

The district attorney who refuses to investigate his colleagues any further.

In many police-involved shootings, that outcome is appropriate. But that doesn't explain the shootings. It doesn't explain the training or why we're supposed to believe cops almost never shoot at the wrong time.

O'Driscoll believes nothing will change until voters see a need and demand it. And he isn't holding his breath. "The problem is most people know cops or someone involved in law enforcement. And they know they are good people doing a difficult job."

Understandably, he says, it's the same within the ranks of police officers. "I was the same way. Whenever a cop kills someone in the line of duty, police say two things: 'Thank God I didn't have to pull the trigger.' And 'We've got to stand behind that guy.' "

That seems to sum up our blueprint for ensuring more and more police-involved shootings.

Until law enforcement leaders push for dramatic change, said O'Driscoll, police training will continue to center on protecting innocent bystanders and police at all costs.

"Basically," he said, "the current policy is, 'Shoot first, explain later.' "