I was reading some emails the other day when I happened across an email from a District Attorney’s office detailing facts of a recent officer involved shooting and why the DA’s office was choosing not to prosecute the officer. Within the email, there were bullet points from each of the officer’s interviews following the shooting and one stood out to me. It read “When he first arrived, he was going to carry his department-issued shotgun from his car to the door of the subject but was told by Officer (name omitted by me) not to bring the shotgun so that his hands would be free to detain the subject if necessary.” The call these officers were responding to involved a subject that had told 911 that he was armed and wanted the police to “come get him.” Each of the officers on scene stated they felt they were being set up and feared being ambushed at the incident location. The officer that didn’t take his shotgun would go on to fire his duty pistol at the suspect……………………. and miss.
Rewind several months and I’m sitting in roll call while we debrief a K9 track we had conducted the previous evening for two robbery suspects (both suspects were armed with handguns). During this track we had several officers make the decision to carry their patrol rifles. The shift supervisor stated this wasn’t a smart move since no one would be “hands free” in case one of the suspects were encountered and needed to be handcuffed. One of the suspects was located during the track and a rifle armed officer handcuffed him.
There is a trend I see where I work, and in other areas other than police work, where people don’t want to carry more capable weapons because of what might happen after a gun fight occurs. In polite company I would say that this is troubling, but my first thoughts are that such a course of action is reckless and fucking stupid. If you think you are about to walk into a gun fight why on Earth would you be more concerned with a trivial task such as handcuffing someone than you would be with equipping yourself with available items that would give you a decided edge should that fight take place? You owe it to yourself, your coworkers, and your family… be prepared.
You shouldn’t plan on being in a fair fight and you shouldn’t plan on fighting fair. Take a lesson from Jim Malone:
Train hard, work smart, and carry enough gun.
Until next time………………..