A Hell of a Way to Make a Living!

This post began as a retelling of my first encounter with the FWPD here in my neighborhood. But since it ended on a negative note, I decided that it would not be fair to introduce the FWPD into my story in such a manner. I would like to employ the same method that I used with my neighbors (giving a few detailed, personal profiles), but that is rather difficult.

While my neighbors live here with me, the officers only work here. I have never sat on one of the officer’s front porches and passed the bottle with them. I have never gone inside one of the officers houses to repair their leaking sink. I have never attended a wedding or a funeral of one of the officers. And I have never paid one of these officer’s sons to mow my lawn. Because their presence here is only a job, not their entire life, I have never gotten to know any FWPD officers as well as I have my neighbors.

I can say from my own observations though, that the officers sometimes face an almost impossible task. I have witnessed a neighbor complain about drug dealers standing on the corner, saying “The police should do something about that.” Then, five minutes later when police stopped to question this group, the same person said “They can’t just harass somebody for standing on the sidewalk. That’s not right.”

I have seen people step out of their house to see why the police are outside, and before they have any idea of what is going on they start complaining about police harassment. The truth is, there are people here who want the police to harass and arrest some of the drug dealers. They just get mad when it’s their own drug dealer (family or friend) who is the current target.

There is no doubt that there are some cases where police abuse is self-evident, but I’ll leave that for another post. Here, I am speaking largely in defense of the police, for the situations where I feel they are unfairly criticized. What I’d like to do now is to ask the reader to watch the following videos where police officers were injured and/or killed. The first thing I want to emphasize is that this is the possibility that every officer faces any time they put on the uniform.

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXBb7BYkVvY
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X14ID3zybSk
3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoBpkDrQLFM&feature=related
4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h9T-k8S1no&feature=related
5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQC22DGjoL4

Often, in cases where a police officer is involved in a struggle with a civilian, someone will claim that it was actually provoked by the police. If the entire incident was not taped, then it is sometimes difficult to determine the full truth. A video may show the civilian striking the officer, but how do you know that the officer did not strike him first before the cameras began rolling. Of course, the opposite could be true as well.

Looking at video #1, the action is already in progress, so we can’t know for certain what has already transpired. But the fact that the shooter was not even being watched, and that there was only one officer initially trying to apprehend the suspect suggests that the cameras didn’t miss much. And the fact that the shooter fired several rounds after the officers were down and after his friend was released show that this is clearly a case of cold blooded murder. In video #2, the officer only got as far as reaching the shooter’s door before he was attacked, and in video #3, the mere arrival of the police car was enough to draw fire.

In each of the above videos, if the same events had first occurred, but the officers then managed to gain control of the situation long enough to fire their own weapons, I am sure there would have been loud protests about police brutality. Now, watch video #4.

4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc2fyEa_RkA

In this video, the man doesn’t have a gun, and he isn’t holding the knife to a civilians throat, so the police try to talk him down - and almost die for it. There was a similar case here in Fort Wayne a couple of years ago. A man was holding a woman at knife point and the police shot and killed him. Many people (including, I believe, the woman who’s life was being threatened) criticized the FWPD for using unnecessary force. And I’m sure if they had hesitated for an extra few seconds, the dead woman’s family would have sued because the police weren’t aggressive enough.

Now, look at the following two videos.

5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT2hX72BS6A
6) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81RIZephDfM

In video #5, at what point should the officer have felt that deadly force was appropriate? Just because he was trying to take her gun doesn’t necessarily mean that he was going to kill her, does it? If that intervening civilian or another officer had shot this man while the struggle was ensuing, there would likely have been complaints about that as well. Now, look at video #6, where the assailant was shot and killed by the officer. There are people that would probably criticize this, even though the officer was clearly in a struggle for his own life.

The main point I’m trying to make with this post is that there are times when it is both appropriate and necessary for an officer to use physical restraint or deadly force against a civilian. Sometimes this might be for the protection of the officer, and other times to protect another civilian. I have a hard time understanding people who seem to have a knee-jerk reaction that any time an officer uses force implies to them that we are living in a fascist state. I guess that they would prefer anarchy?

As I talk about some of the encounters that I have had with FWPD, I ask that you try to differentiate between my thought about an incident, and my reaction to it. There are times that I have encountered FWPD officers who were deserving of being called an asshole. But I still said “Yes Sir,” kept my hands in full view, and tried to give them room to do their job. In fact, if I had protested too much at the time, that might have provided justification for the asshole to consider me hostile, and perhaps use physical force against me.

And every time (prior to 2006) that one of these incidents has occurred (there have been several), I have let it go without filing any complaint. I consider a little bit of heavy-handedness by the police here (even when occasionally directed at me) to be a necessary and acceptable price to pay for keeping the dealers in check.

But, beginning with my next post, I will retell some of my encounters with the FWPD. It is necessary that the reader understand these many small events because, when combined, they helped greatly to inform my decision to file a complaint against one FWPD officer in 2006.