Poor police work and possi cometatus.

The below link to a video will become a standard viewing requirement for police academy recruits in the near future, like tomorrow morning. It is obvious why it is so important. It looks like fiction, but it is not. The officer in this video was reported to have died from his wounds.

See this video by tapping here. (Expect a commercial first)

Most if not all law enforcement folks will point to this naive act of the slain officer as "poor police work." Perhaps the officer forgot his place; perhaps he had a long day and was off duty soon, or perhaps he was scheduled for a long vacation and started vacationing while on duty. Perhaps turning your back on a suspect in this part of the world is considered safe. It is not.

The dead officer somehow thought that the pepper spray would incapacitate his suspect, but why? This must be one of the worst police stops ever videoed. Who is this guy's department training officer? Dammit, I want to know!

Watch the officer approach the suspect's car. What does he have in his shooting-hand? Right, a can of "pepper spray." That's a big mistake to begin with. Who are this guys peers? Why did this officer learn to carry any object other than his firearm in his shooting-hand? Did he stand around the coffee counters with a cup of coffee in this hand while telling war stories? Over the years, did he somehow learn to ignore one of the greatest commandments of police work: Keep your shooting-hand free, always.

I see security cops do it all the time. They stand around smoking with their right hand, and it is their right hand that they must use to draw and shoot. Then there's the officers that somehow think that their academy training was fine for the academy, but ignore their initial training because they think that they know it all. Well, they do not know it all.

Cops die every day doing good police work. They get caught by the numbers; not here. Here the three major errors leading to total negligence are 1. failing to take control of the situation, 2. approaching a suspect with the shooting-hand encumbered (pepper spray), and 3. turning on a suspect. Try these stunts in the Pico Union District of Los Angeles as a police officer and see natural selection operate quickly and effectively.

I have not carried a sidearm in decades. I can honestly say that to this day my right hand, my shooting hand, is free anytime I need to carry something with one hand. I still, by good training, keep my shooting-hand free. To this day! I don't think my behavior is unusual. I think it reflects that I had good training.

Cops learn that they give up their dominant hand when they enter law enforcement, and that's 24/7/365. A well trained cop does not stop to think about which hand to use for holding any thing, ever. They know that their dominant hand is free to the last. Encumber the weak hand, not the dominant hand, always. When a cop abandons this commandment, a bolt of lightning-like energy should propagate from their brain to their shooting-hand to correct the situation.

Off the point, but worthy of bringing up in terms of another police officer being shot dead, when people complain about police abuse, they are correct to do so when an officer's behavior is abusive. I want to point out, too, that every police officer copes with a certain amount of anxiety every day. Like the shooting-hand, their work becomes part of their soma, their musculature or muscle memory. The stress is there even though the stress object is not.

So being a "police officer" does not somehow remove a person from our species' fight-or-flight response system and all that comes with it. We must expect daily anxieties to wear away at the more human side of humanity in the business of policing. This is not to excuse police abuse, but to help explain it. Cops live with a real and imagined threat to their lives every day that they put on their badge. Here, a cop made a big mistake and paid the big price for being naive. Cops cannot forget that they are cops in a real world of bad guys. I am sure that most cops do not need me to remind them.

And what about the second shooter, the possi cometatus? Will he or she now deal with the ordeal related to breaking one of the great commandments? One act of poor police work makes its way to others real quick, it appears.

I am sorry.
Eddie Evans
Crime Scene Cleanup