How LE & others deal with the job of killing and death

[davidbfpo]

In my early service I frequently encountered death, nearly always what we called a 'sudden death' and with two exceptions they were senior citizens who died at home. The one exception lingered for a while, a police retiree collapsed in the road and I was told to stay with the body and widow till family arrived a few hours later. In the second case a man in his 50's collapsed at work, we attended as it was thought to be an industrial accident and we then found his wife to tell her the bad news.

Dealing with death then became quite routine. Calm people down, get a relative in, get details for a coroner's report, offer very basic assistance and exit.

Child deaths, especially in road accidents, are known to be bad. Thankfully I never dealt with one.

Never came close to killing anyone and I can now only recall one incident where someone was perceived as wanting to kill the police - in a prolonged vehicle pursuit. That lead to a flashback moment with episodes of my life speeding past and then gone - the "bad guy" being caught minutes later.

Violent deaths in my career were rare, strangely I can recall those colleagues who committed suicide more clearly.

Apart from the routine, "canteen" humour had a part and putting distance between your life at work and life at home. I'm hard pressed to think of a single debriefing after an incident and was only offered counselling after a police suicide - which I was unaware of having just joined his ex-team.

Way back in 1974, when the B'ham Pub Bombings happened, with twenty-five dead and scores injured - when I joined in 1980 it was often referred to. We also knew one officer left under the strain and rejoined ten years later - he was rarely on the streets and was "looked after".

I have asked two ex-RUC veterans for their comments.

[Sergeant T]

Slap: AMEN!

In my humble experience, dealing with straight death wasn't so bad. Dealing with the families was the hard part. Humans are spring-loaded to emotional absorption and that's about as big as emotions get. That hours long wait for a coroner or M.E. investigator to show up, sitting with grieving and understandably irrational family members, began to wear heavy after a while. I don't think it got easier, but I got a better professional routine over time, and that helped. It's worth noting that not all of them were bad. Worked one where a Holocaust survivor died sitting in his easy chair at 86. Felt honored and awed to be present for that one.

It's hard to predict how an officer will react to having to use deadly force. We're all a three minute fight away from becoming cave men, and the best training can ameliorate it but can't forestall it. First officer involved I worked was a 10 year vet and FTO who got into a nasty fight that resulted in her shooting someone twice her size. The only coherent statement she made in the immediate aftermath was apologizing repeatedly to the supervisor that she didn't have any choice. It was a perfectly legit shooting, never any legal issues, and it took her a while to come back. (She also had blocks of amnesia around the incident.)

The biggest predictor (IMHO) of how using deadly force will sit with an officer is how the shooting is perceived by peers and the community at large. Peers are usually very forgiving; the community can be fickle. Anymore it seems like nearly every officer involved shooting in a major metro area has some charge to it. We went through a bad year a few years back where there were over a dozen. All were perfectly legit, but after about the 8th or so the public started getting nasty.

If I have a complaint about the way training has trended the past few decades it would be that deadly force is presented almost as a failure on the part of the officer. This is occasionally reinforced by a local DA prosecuting an officer for murder/manslaughter after a shooting, only to be found not guilty at trail or upon appeal. (Three instances of this jump to mind.) The rational part of me knows this is a reflection of the society we serve, a society that is always uncomfortable with deadly force. But the result has been a lot of angst for those that have to make that awful choice.