Fights, the Knockout Game and Deadly Force.

A point I made in previous blog debates is it's easy to look at what someone did with 20/20 hindsight, but decisions on deadly force are usually made in an instant. Here is a police cadet getting an education on that.

A loudmouth female police cadet, Trayvon Martin, and the “Knockout Game”

In one of the police academies I attended we watched a video of a police shooting. Two officers in two patrol cars were on a traffic stop and tried to arrest a passenger who had given them a fake name. The passenger started swinging, punched both officers and knocked them to the ground, then ran toward the second patrol car. One of the officers shot him.

Several cadets expressed outrage at the shooting. I had already been a cop for a few years, and had a different view. I argued that the cadets should look at the incident from the officers’ perspective. The officers were making a lawful arrest, they had both been assaulted and beaten badly, and may have thought the suspect was running toward the second patrol car to retrieve a weapon. At that point, a few years into my career, I had already been knocked silly a couple of times, and I knew those officers probably had their bells rung and could have honestly believed they were in life-threatening danger. I didn’t argue that the officers were definitely right, just that the situation may have been more complex than the inexperienced cadets thought.

Emphasis mine. As a reminders, the standard for use of deadly force is reasonable fear for life or serious bodily injury against yourself or a third person. Let's go on.

One female cadet blurted, “Just because you were already a cop, you think that whatever cops do is right!”

I groaned quietly. “No. I’m saying the officers got the crap beat out of them and may have thought the suspect was about to get one of their shotguns and shoot them.” Then I asked, “Have you ever been in a fight?”

“I’ve been in lots of fights!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been in fights at school and at clubs, I know what it’s like to get in a fight. Those cops had no reason to shoot that guy. All he did was hit them.”

The instructor shut our conversation down. I didn’t bring it up again. Until several months later, after the female cadet learned a hard lesson.

Toward the end of the academy we went through a very difficult training exercise. We had to run around the academy building, run up and down stairs several times, drag a dummy and a few other things, then get into a ring and fight an instructor for several minutes. The instructor was all padded up, and all we had was a soft foam baton and fake pistol. Most of the cadets got into the ring totally worn out, then got worked over by the instructor.

I was standing outside the ring when the female cadet went through. The instructor she faced was a very strong, female workout fanatic. The cadet ran into the ring panting and sweating, faced the instructor and yelled, “You’re under arrest! Turn around and put your hands behind your back!”

Without a word, the instructor threw a blindingly fast punch and nailed the cadet right between the eyes.

The cadet slammed onto her back. Her eyes were wide open and staring straight up, her mouth hanging slack. She was totally dazed from the blow. You could almost see the birds and stars swirling around her head.

Everyone screamed at her to get up. She eventually did, and did her best to put up a defense. But the fight was pretty much over after the first hit.

After the exercise, I casually said to the cadet, “So, I thought you had been in a lot of fights.”

She answered, “Yeah, but not like that! I was in girl fights. All we did was scratch each other and pull hair. That instructor hit me like a man.”

As I said, she learned an important lesson that day. If that instructor hadn’t knocked the crap out of her, she might have hit the street not knowing that one punch can completely disable someone. The cadet went on to become a very good officer.

During the uproar over the Trayvon Martin court case, I heard a lot of intelligent, educated people comment that “All Trayvon did was hit Zimmerman. That’s no reason to shoot someone.” And I saw in them the same ignorance of reality that the instructor had beaten out of the female cadet.

The people who made those comments have probably never been in a real fight. But, like the cadet, they think they have. They maybe had a few schoolyard scuffles, where neither side was trying to kill the other. They threw a few punches and kicks, without intending to really hurt their opponent, and their opponent landed a few blows without really hurting them. Worst case, someone got a bloody nose, or split lip. Maybe these people only watched others fight, and were never in one themselves.

But no matter. Even though their mental concept of a fight is two five year olds slapping each other under the monkey bars, they still believe their narrow experience with “fighting” makes them qualified to dictate when we’re allowed to use a gun to defend ourselves from someone who’s “only” throwing punches. They don’t seem to notice that no UFC or MMA fighters, people with real, actual fighting experience, are proclaiming “Your life can’t be in danger from being punched.”

Well, here’s some reality for those who think it’s always wrong to shoot an unarmed person, or who can’t fathom how George Zimmerman could have possibly been justified in shooting Trayvon Martin.

Last year an El Paso, Texas police officer was beaten to death by an unarmed 17 year old. The teenager punched the officer, knocked him backward onto the concrete, then straddled him and beat him severely. The officer never regained consciousness and died nine days later. He was a 29 year old Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A few days ago an off-duty NYPD officer was knocked out with one punch. His attacker then repeatedly punched and kicked him while he was unconscious and helpless, and also slammed the back of his head into the concrete. The officer is currently in a medically-induced coma.

He goes on to discuss the Martin-Zimmerman case in more detail, but the point is made. When reviewing what a cop (or a homeowner for that matter) does in a spilt decision to use a weapon against someone, the viewpoint must be the from that person. Not from a third person sitting in an office with a cop of coffee, but of the man or woman in an alley who's just been punched multiple times, is about to loose consciousness and has to decide in a fraction of a second to shoot or not shoot.

Great article Mr. Hernandez.