Let Examine Shootouts

All too often we hear the term Police shoot-out, in Jamaica this takes on par­tic­u­lar res­o­nance because of the high instances of vio­lent con­fronta­tion between police and mem­bers of the pub­lic which results in civil­ian death.Over the years there has been much said about this phe­nom­e­non both local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Various Agencies and Organizations have done their own stud­ies and made analy­sis most of which are slant­ed sen­sa­tion­al­ist opin­ions which has very lit­tle basis in facts or are at best poor­ly arrived at one sided con­clu­sions. A quick Google search (police in Jamaica) bears this out.

When we hear the term shoot-out what leaps to mind is an image of a clas­sic depic­tion of police and crim­i­nal both armed and a shoot-out occurs , lets see who sur­vives. In fact that mis­con­cep­tion is so ingrained in our psy­che that it forms the basis for seri­ous cri­tique and leg­is­la­tion in Jamaica which are hav­ing seri­ous con­se­quences on how law enforce­ment offi­cers car­ry out their func­tions and how they are judged when they do. The clas­sic wild-west men­tal mis­con­cep­tion of what qual­i­fies as a shoot-out con­tin­ues to inform the debate sur­round­ing police use of force in the country.

Needless to say pol­i­cy papers have been writ­ten, new Agencies formed which have over­sight of police actions and assump­tions are con­tin­u­ous­ly made about police shoot-outs with­out an in-depth look at how we arrive at those shoot­ing sta­tis­tics. For one, no one both­ers to ask law enforce­ment offi­cers about their expe­ri­ences in these mat­ters. Despite sup­posed changes in the edu­ca­tion­al require­ments par­tic­u­lar­ly for the gazetted ranks they are still treat­ed as night-watch­men. Because of these inequities in the way this issue is per­ceived and the inac­cu­ra­cies in the pub­lic sphere, I have con­sis­tent­ly sought to shine a light on the facts in the inter­est of fairness.

Out of that debate was born Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), The Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), The office of Public Defender and oth­ers. Consensus being, that dras­tic police over­sight is need­ed to cur­tail alleged police excess­es. No one can rea­son­ably say that police in Jamaica has act­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly or have not engaged in actions that are gross­ly anti­thet­i­cal to what are expect­ed of police offi­cers. As such even when offi­cers are killed defend­ing the very lives of cit­i­zens the con­ver­sa­tion cen­ters on beyond the pale alleged actions of police. Of course many who speak the loud­est are moti­vat­ed not by the need to see a pro­fes­sion­al agency root­ing out crime but are influ­enced by deep seat­ed hatred for cops because of crim­i­nal con­nec­tions or worse, or may have had crim­i­nal kit and kin tak­en out by police.

Many state­ments have been made regard­ing the issue of police use of force, many are cor­rect, many are ill-informed out­ra­geous alle­ga­tions which has no basis in facts, or are oth­er­wise col­ored by nefar­i­ous inter­est. No com­ment was as out­ra­geous as the one made by Carolyn Gomes , the pedi­atric doc­tor who heads (JFJ) and Earl Witter a Lawyer, who heads the tax-pay­er fund­ed Public defend­ers office, that not enough police offi­cers are get­ting killed com­men­su­rate with the amount of civil­ians killed by police. I con­tin­ue to be out­raged by this state­ment, not because of what it sounds like they are say­ing , (“that more cops should get killed”), but by their absolute igno­rance of what con­sti­tutes a shoot-out in a police sense. I am forced to con­tin­ue a cru­sade against this ill-informed men­tal­i­ty which is result­ing in seri­ous harm and death to Jamaican cops . I have heard all kinds of expla­na­tion of what Gomes and Witter could have meant or may have meant. One per­son had this to say.

quote:

I real­ly think this “not enough police offi­cers are being killed” state­ment by the JFJ pres­i­dent was most unfor­tu­nate, if only that she should have known bet­ter that those who mis­con­strue the real gist of the state­ment had the pow­er to make their opin­ions fly.
The edi­to­r­i­al as post­ed was a per­fect exam­ple of some­one under­stand­ing, but pre­tend­ing not to understand.
The fact is, each shoot­ing by the police should rep­re­sent an instant where there was a life and death strug­gle, between law enforce­ment and vio­lent, armed crim­i­nals. This, it should be not­ed, must NOT be con­fused with law enforce­ment com­ing into CONTACT with armed crim­i­nals. All police shoot­ings are orig­i­nat­ed from con­tact with some ele­ment of the cit­i­zen­ry, whether it be vio­lent, armed crim­i­nals, domes­tic abusers, vehi­cle traf­fic vio­laters, scam/​fraudists, etc. HOW MANY OF THESE CONTACTS, even with the armed crim­i­nals, actu­al­ly saw a LIFE AND DEATH STRUGGLE which result­ed in vic­to­ry and life for the police, and defeat and death for the criminal?
How many? This is where those who sup­port the Police’s moral­ly dis­eased pol­i­cy of “if yu have a gun, yu gwine dead” take a stand against Dr. Gomez and her state­ment. The edi­to­r­i­al not­ed that around fifty police offi­cers have been killed since 2002 ( I per­son­al­ly lodge a caveat that it is more). The police have killed well over 2000 peo­ple since that time. Well, since it is around fifty police dead, and each shoot­ing should basi­cal­ly rep­re­sent a vio­lent, life and death strug­gle between police and vio­lent, armed and fir­ing crim­i­nals, how MORE police­men have not been killed? In police shoot­ings where mul­ti­ple per­sons- as much as SEVEN AND EIGHT — have been killed, NOT ONE police offi­cer has ever been killed. How come? The real irony of this is how we have made our­selves con­ve­nient­ly igno­rant of the truth. The truth is, the police use AMBUSH TACTICS in MOST con­tact cir­cum­stances to sur­prise, ren­der help­less, and EXECUTE these pur­port­ed­ly “armed and vio­lent” crim­i­nals. There are 2 prin­ci­ples we over­look, in order to fur­ther over­look the pre­dom­i­nant­ly lie we hear in police shoot­ing reports:
1) The BEST WAY to face peo­ple with firearms on a REPEATED AND REGULAR basis AND COME BACK ALIVE is to AMBUSH, RENDER HELPLESS AND EXECUTE them.
2) How do police in Jamaica typ­i­cal­ly die? They’re AMBUSHED. When you’re ambushed, you are made sig­nif­i­cant­ly help­less by virtue that time is seri­ous­ly against your effort(s) to react to the threat. Those cap­i­tal­iz­ing with­out mer­cy on your demise — DESPITE YOUR DEMISE — would have basi­cal­ly exe­cut­ed you. That’s how police and crim­i­nals die in Jamaica. They typ­i­cal­ly ambush each other.
 Sure, we know about the sup­posed supe­ri­or­i­ty that police pos­sess through train­ing, but that train­ing should have made them aware that the typ­i­cal gun­fight between armed par­ties last only 2.5 sec­onds, the aver­age dis­tance between com­bat­ants starts at around eight-to ten feet apart, and end between 15 to 25 feet apart, and ALL COMBATANTS WILL GET HIT. The police know that a gun­fight does­n’t go like in the movies, but they fig­ure that YOU don’t have to know. They fig­ure you can keep on watch­ing TV, so they’ll catch you on the 7 ‘O‑Clock News. That is WHY Dr. Gomez asked the ques­tion that if police and crim­i­nals were fight­ing each oth­er fair and square, how come more police ain’t dead? A smart Jamaican would not be look­ing JUST at the dis­par­i­ty in num­bers between police and crim­i­nal dead, per se. They would have eas­i­ly deduced that the police force is an armed, legit­i­mate group, who sim­ply ambush their tar­gets more than their tar­gets ambush them. No MATTER wh
o is the big­ger force, if you come to fair gun­fight, a LOT OF PEOPLE from BOTH SIDES are going to die. Again, Dr. Gomez knows this, but she has some hope still that not all police­men are stu­pid enough to think that ALL Jamaicans are stu­pid. The first rule of the gun­fight­er is that you must NEVER GO TO A FAIR FIGHT.

I thank my friend, I did not name you as the per­son who wrote this impas­sioned assess­ment because I did not obtain your per­mis­sion to do so. I wish to thank you for your syn­op­sis which forms the heart of my argu­ment. This assess­ment is well put togeth­er, it seem to make per­fect sense, in fact to some­one not in the know, it would be dif­fi­cult to argue with what’s in it. Like math how­ev­er, one may mul­ti­ply 10 x 10 and arrive at 100, to a casu­al observ­er there is noth­ing to argue about 10 x 10 =100. If the method­ol­o­gy used in arriv­ing at the num­bers 10 was how­ev­er incor­rect, fraud­u­lent, decep­tive or oth­er­wise unscrupu­lous then the 100 total is wrong despite it’s appearance.

Once we divorce our­selves of the ill-con­ceived notion of what char­ac­ter­izes a shoot-out, we allow our­selves to be more informed on the sub­ject which should impact our per­cep­tions. As I said before what leaps to mind when we hear shoot-outs involv­ing police has no rela­tion­ship to Hollywood’s west­ern-movie drama­ti­za­tion. Laws giv­ing police the right to use lethal force are gen­er­al­ly the same in the west­ern Industrialized world. Officers may use dead­ly force In defense of the their own lives or that of anoth­er. These laws are designed by coun­tries seri­ous about law enforce­ment and copied by coun­tries like Jamaica with an under­stand­ing of the com­plex­i­ties sur­round­ing the need for offi­cer safety.

Those com­plex­i­ties includes, though not con­fined to the fact that an offi­cer may use lethal force to neu­tral­ize a sub­ject whom he believes is about to cause him seri­ous harm or worse. Even though in the end the sub­ject was unarmed. What mat­ters is the fear in the offi­cer’s mind at the time he used said force. Now that use of force can­not be just that the offi­cer is fear­ful, the fear must be imme­di­ate and be caused by some­thing , ie a sub­ject pulling some­thing from his waist-band when ordered to show his hand. An offi­cer has no duty to await get­ting shot, before using dead­ly force under such cir­cum­stances as is believed by many in the Jamaican community.

That right of self defense is not just extend­ed to law enforce­ment in Jamaica, every cit­i­zen may use dead­ly force to defend him/​herself in like man­ner. If some­one approach­es anoth­er mem­ber of the pub­lic even in the streets with his hand under­shirt , giv­ing the impres­sion he has a weapon, threat­ens that per­son and attempts to rob him , that per­son has the right to use lethal force to repel that assault, even though it is lat­er deter­mined that the per­son was not armed with a weapon, the belief in that per­son­’s mind that he/​she was in immi­nent dan­ger is enough.

Jamaican crim­i­nals are excep­tion­al­ly vio­lent, Police depart­ment like the (NYPD ) the (RCMP) and British law enforce­ment are painful­ly aware of this . NYPD offi­cers revised the way they treat­ed Jamaican crim­i­nals when one of their own was mur­dered while he sat in his patrol car in Queens. Over the last three decades lit­er­al­ly every front-line Jamaican cop has been shot, some on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent occa­sions. Many have been killed, Even more have sur­vived being shot-at a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of times. I am no stranger to this, I have been shot at many times , and was shot once. These instances of life and death occur­rences are not abstract num­bers on a spread sheet to be debat­ed. They are actu­al instances of seri­ous injury and death to actu­al peo­ple who went out to do the job they are asked to do. As such this issue can­not be left to lob­by groups and peo­ple with agen­das to decide.

Police depart­ments and oth­er secu­ri­ty agen­cies are faced with the unpleas­ant , un-envi­able task of hav­ing to deal with tak­ing the life of some­one they thought was armed , only to dis­cov­er the per­son was­n’t , or the per­ceived threat was not real. Yet even as they do, they have to go back to work and take the same actions the next day because they sim­ply can­not wait to find out whether the guy grop­ing in his waist-band intend to kill him. Just recent­ly Capital police in Washington DC used what they called jus­ti­fi­able lethal force to stop a woman in a speed­ing car near the White House and lat­er the Capitol build­ing. In the end it turned out the woman was not armed , and was prob­a­bly suf­fer­ing from a men­tal con­di­tion. Whether we believe the lev­el of force applied was incon­sis­tent with the threat posed by her, is imma­te­r­i­al , we sim­ply do not know what offi­cers tasked with pro­tect­ing those insti­tu­tions were think­ing at the time, tak­ing into con­sid­er­ing the world we now live in.

The night I was shot I was not part of any over­whelm­ing force lay­ing in wait to ambush any­one, as per my friend ill-informed analy­sis. I was a young offi­cer accom­pa­ny­ing a man home, he was ter­ri­fied that he was about to lose his life to a young punk who want­ed to kill him. In actu­al­i­ty we were ambushed and shot. When we read some­thing in a book or online, it does not qual­i­fy us to make qual­i­ta­tive judge­ment on an issue , it gives us a cur­so­ry idea how things pos­si­bly work not make us an author­i­ty. Even when we are trained in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline we don’t always know every­thing we need to know. Imagine when we have no for­mal train­ing, yet we seek to make alle­ga­tions and opin­ions facts. This brings us back to Carolyn Gomes and the (JFJ). How could Gomes com­pe­tent­ly argue about what con­sti­tutes jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide when she has no train­ing in polic­ing, nei­ther is she a lawyer. Does hav­ing a med­ical doc­tor­ate qual­i­fies her to speak with author­i­ty on every sub­ject? The answer is absolute­ly not , as such her state­ment was incen­di­ary and mali­cious. It is cost­ing offi­cers their lives.

Gomes:

Asking a doc­tor how to put out a fire would be ludi­crous. Asking a doc­tor how polic­ing is done and what con­sti­tutes jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide is equal­ly as ludi­crous. Here is an exam­ple.https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​y​w​p​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​144. Presidents , Prime Ministers and heads of Corporations bring in experts to advise them on what to do before they make deci­sions. Gomes should con­sid­er being more judi­cious and restrained before she opens her mouth to make unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions. So too are peo­ple who speak with­out the appro­pri­ate infor­ma­tion. However, every instance of Extra judi­cial killing by law enforce­ment must be con­demned. If we remain silent we are all at risk.