Just let them bleed out?
“This guy’s bleeding out; if we don’t do something, he is going to die. We need to go in and help him out!” That was the officer’s testimony at the Board of Rights. He did go in. The result was a suspension.
The facts are these. The officer was 10 months off probation. His unit was assigned the “unknown trouble” call and rolled Code 3. While en route, updates were broadcast. “Your call is now a screaming woman,” followed by suspect is armed with a knife.”
It was Valentine’s Day. The suspect, who was on meth, apparently wasn’t feeling the love. The suspect was a 26-year-old with numerous narcotic arrests and a previous felony conviction for possession. He was at the apartment of an acquaintance and his girlfriend. He told them that they were evil and he had to cut their heads off.
Understandably, they called 911. When 911 was called, the suspect “ran down to a lower apartment, and for no reason, forced his way in and stabbed a 60-year-old man who was just watching TV.”
Other citizens came to the aid of the victim, and the suspect ran from the apartment complex and climbed on top of a recreational vehicle parked on the street. That was when the officer and his partner arrived at the scene. They requested a backup, an air unit and a supervisor. Citizens also advised the officers that a man had been stabbed, and the officers requested an ambulance.
The officer observed the suspect on top of the RV and saw him drag a knife across his throat, causing blood to trickle out of his neck. The officer requested a second ambulance and told bystanders to move back. The suspect then began to pry a vent open that was on top of the RV and attempted to get inside.
When he was halfway inside, the officer attempted to open the side door of the RV and the passenger door because he was concerned that there were people residing in the RV, as he has seen homeless people typically do. Both doors were locked. At this point, a citizen came up and gave the officer a key. The officer unlocked the side door because the suspect was halfway inside and he wanted to be able to assist anyone who might be in the RV, as well as provide medical aid to the suspect, who had just slit his throat. Unfortunately, the entrance was blocked by a large generator inside the door.
The suspect entered the RV, got into the driver’s seat and began trying to insert keys into the RV’s ignition. By now, other officers had arrived, and fearing that the suspect was going to drive the RV away, they smashed the driver’s side window, and after numerous warnings, fired a Taser at the suspect. The Taser had a minor effect, and the suspect crawled away into the living area of the RV with the knife still in his hand.
The officer had been at the scene for 4 minutes and 30 seconds.
The officer could hear multiple screams and moans coming from inside the RV. He could not tell if it was one person or two. He attempted to peek over the generator blocking the door to peer into the RV interior. A sergeant had arrived at this time, and he and a group of officers were behind the officer. The officer could see the suspect lying on the floor, facedown, with his hands under him. The officer yelled several times both in English and Spanish to put his hands up and to show his hands. There was no response.
The sergeant, at that point, ordered the officer to “go in and get him.” The officer advised him that “it’s not good right now, I can’t see his hands” and requested more time. The suspect then moved out of view.
The officer leaned into the RV farther and observed that the suspect was now sitting on the couch, and he could now see the suspect’s hands. He appeared to be stabbing himself in the stomach area. The officer noted that the suspect’s demeanor appeared much more lethargic, and it appeared as if his health and consciousness were deteriorating. His hands dropped to his side, and the officer could see blood gushing out of his stomach, and the knife was still inside of his stomach.
The officer believed he was bleeding out. That is when he said, “This guy’s bleeding out; if we don’t do something, he is going to die. We need to go in and help him out!”
What would you do? The officer went in with another officer who had a Taser. The suspect opened his eyes and looked at them. He was given commands of, “Hey, relax. Put your hands up. Don’t reach for the knife.” The suspect lifted his hands as if to raise them, and then brought them back down to the knife.
The Taser officer fired. It had absolutely no effect. In fact, it seemed to energize the suspect. He jumped, became rigid and tense, and stabbed himself two or three more times.
The officers pleaded with him to drop the knife, but instead he quickly advanced with the knife on the officer, and, fearing for his and his partner’s life, the officer fired his weapon from a decreasing distance of 5 to 3 feet, stopping the advance.
Less than 2 minutes had passed from the Tasering of the suspect in the driver’s side of the RV to the shooting.
The coroner’s report indicated that the suspect died from multiple gunshot wounds but had a “potentially fatal” wound from the knife since it had incised the liver.
The Department “Administratively Disapproved” the use of force. No one disputed that there was no other alternative to shooting when the suspect charged the officer with the knife, but the Department found that the decision to enter the RV caused the shooting, and therefore, under the Hayes theory reflected in the Use of Force Policy, the shooting was out of policy. “The reasonableness of an officer’s use of deadly force includes consideration of the officer’s tactical conduct and decisions leading up to the use of force.”
The officer challenged the Department’s decision to give him suspension days at a Board of Rights.
A captain from Training Division testified that the officer should have called SWAT because this was a barricaded suspect situation even though, he admitted, SWAT would not have arrived for about an hour.
A sergeant from Training Division testified that when someone is bleeding out, there is no time to wait for SWAT, that it is an exigent circumstance and the officer was correct to go in.
Rank trumps experience. The Board was sympathetic to the officer’s plight, reduced the number of suspension days, but still found him guilty.
In the meantime, the relatives of the suspect filed a lawsuit against the Department and the officer. Why not? The Department had ruled that entering the RV caused the shooting.
We appealed the Board’s decision to the Superior Court. The judge ruled that the Department’s ruling was correct, and the officer did not formulate or communicate a tactical plan prior to entry. The suspension days were affirmed.
The City had previously settled the lawsuit for $500,000. “Nowhere does the policy state that reverence for life of a possible murder suspect mandates an officer to enter into a small, enclosed space with an armed and dangerous barricaded suspect…”the City wrote in its brief.
“But officers do,” I answered, “And thank goodness they do.” the officer had entered with one thing in mind—to save the life of the suspect. A Taser usually immobilizes, but this time it didn’t. We are not supposed to be judged with 20/20 hindsight. An officer’s act of bravery, instead of being lauded, was trashed.
Economically, there is no doubt that everyone would have been better off letting the suspect bleed out. And if that is the policy of the Los Angeles Police Department, it should be clearly explained in writing. Officers, especially young officers not yet jaded, think they should be saving lives even at the risk of their own safety. Someone bleeding out will die in minutes. A decision needs to be made immediately.
The officer and the sergeant rose to the occasion. “LAPD officers do not wait until people are safely dead before they act,” I wrote in my brief. Apparently, this sentiment was wrong. The Department, the City and a judge do not see it this way. Perhaps those of us who would choose to go in are dinosaurs. Perhaps our policy of “reverence for life” has unwritten limitations.
The Hayes addition to our Use of Force Policy is illogical. If an officer’s tactics prior to a use of force can make the use of force out of policy before it occurs, to be in policy, an officer must refrain then from using deadly force and allow himself to be murdered. According to the Department, the City and the judge, the alleged bad decision to enter the RV had already made any use of deadly force out of policy even before the suspect charged the officer with the knife. The only way the officer could be in policy was to not shoot and allow himself to be stabbed.
In the end, the persons who tried to save a life were chastised. The person who tried to kill an innocent citizen and chose to die by suicide by cop enriched his family at the expense of taxpayers. This seems upside down to us dinosaurs. Anyway ….
Be legally careful out there.
