Decision to draw, shoot can change in an instant

Sunday, June 6, 1999 | 9:42 a.m.

Blink.

A police officer decides whether to draw and fire his gun.

Blink.

"It can change by the second," Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Officer Steve Meriwether said.

Blink.

"Think of your worst fear in this world. That's the situation the officer is in," he said. Meriwether, department spokesman, has been a Metro Police officer for 12 years. In that time he has drawn his gun once, yet decided against firing it because he said his perception of the situation changed in an instant.

"It's a a common-sense issue, which is a major part of our job anyway," he said.

Metro officers go through 800 hours of academy training and must be tested and certified on their service weapons every three months after they become full-fledged officers.

But the perception of whether their lives or the lives of others are in peril -- the perception that makes them decide whether to draw and shoot -- can be fully tested only when the situation and potentially deadly outcome are real.

Recent shootings in Las Vegas and other metropolitan areas have put officers and their perceptions in the cross fire of public opinion nationwide. The resulting wounds can deeply damage the often fragile relationship between police and the people they're paid to protect.

Four New York City police officers have been charged with second-degree murder for the February slaying of an unarmed African immigrant who died when officers fired 41 bullets at him, hitting him 19 times.

Los Angeles County's police have received verbal lashings from residents who are angry over the May 21 shooting death of a 54-year-old homeless woman.

Two officers on bicycles stopped to see whether she was using a stolen shopping cart to tote her belongings. She pushed one of them down with the cart, and he shot her as she lunged toward him holding a screwdriver.

Los Angeles officers spend 100 of their 1,064 training hours learning how to properly use firearms, department spokesman Lt. Anthony Alba said. Another 70 hours are spent on learning nonlethal means of subduing people and self-defense.

"We shoot to stop, not to kill," Alba said.

That philosophy -- also adopted by Metro Police -- means an officer's primary goal in shooting is to stop whatever action presents a mortal danger to himself or other people. Killing the suspect is not the primary intention, although that often is the outcome.

And all the classes, the shoot-or-don't-shoot training videos and discussions come down to the same basic rule, Alba said.

"If they can justify it's in defense of human life, they are over the biggest hurdle," he said.

The FBI tells agents they may shoot whenever a suspect poses an "imminent danger" to the agent or others, Kevin Caudle, a special agent and spokesman for the FBI's Las Vegas office, said.

It's a policy that gives the agent a lot of leeway in that "imminent" doesn't have to mean immediate. For instance, the agent could shoot someone who has threatened a hostage's life, even though no apparent action to do so has happened.

"That's a gray area that's gotten us in hot water," Caudle said. "We make mistakes. We shoot when we shouldn't shoot. We get shot when we should've shot them.

"It's a gut instinct."

The Nevada Law Enforcement Academy trains officers from a variety of agencies and background, from wildlife officers to highway patrol troopers to cadets from police departments in small towns.

Firearms training there includes classroom work, firing range time and use of the shoot-or-don't-shoot videos that put officers in lifelike scenarios, said Mike Wiltse, a Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper and one of the academy firing range masters. Still, there's no way to make sure everyone reacts the same way on the street, Wiltse said. People have different thresholds for determining what is dangerous.

"They can have the training out of a book, but what the people end up with is different. What people take away from the class is different," he said. "It's very stressful and very difficult. What's dangerous to you might not be dangerous to me."

Law enforcement officers typically carry semi-automatic guns. That means they have to pull the trigger for each and every shot, Meriwether said.

Still, officers are usually shooting at a moving target with the intention of stopping an attack, and that can take more than a couple of shots. It takes but a few seconds to fire 12, 14 or 16 times, he said.

Metro Police Officer Bruce Gentner fired 14 shots when he decided to draw and shoot at 32-year-old John Perrin on a Las Vegas street corner April 12.

Perrin was running and dribbling a basketball when Gentner stopped him because he said Perrin's actions looked suspicious. The officer drew and fired when Perrin reached into his waistband for an object that later turned out to be a vial filled with a chemical used to make methamphetamine.

Reaching into a waistband is a textbook move for someone who is going to pull out a weapon and shoot, Meriwether said. It's one of many movements police academy classes train officers to watch.

"Watch the hands. It's the hands that can kill you. You hear that every day," Meriwether said. "There's a reaction time. If you wait until a weapon is pointed at you, you're going to get shot."

Caudle said what suspects refuse to do often is the most telling. People who refuse to show their hands, refuse to get out of a car or refuse to turn around and face the officer may very well be buying some time in order to arm themselves.

Wiltse said the state academy teaches recruits that when people refuse to do as they are told the first time, that's the first sign of real trouble.

"When a guy's arguing with you, and he's stalling, you're the officer and you're saying, 'There's something going on here, and I'd better be ready.' At that point the suspect dictates the level of force," Wiltse said.

Metro's Gentner was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in a Clark County coroner's inquest May 12, eliciting a barrage of criticism from residents who for years have been calling for an overhaul of the inquest system.

They cited statistics showing that inquest panels have found fault with an officer's actions only once in 23 years, and that recommendation later was thrown out by a grand jury. City and county officials have approved the concept for a new citizens review panel.

But even that is no silver bullet, one expert warned.

"The citizens review board is no magic solution. It's only a piece of the puzzle. They won't solve the problems by themselves," said John Burkoff, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and chairman of that city's citizens review board.

"Being a police officer is one of the hardest jobs there is. We say, 'Get the bad guys, but we want you to do it this way or that way only,' " Burkoff said.

Meriwether said officers handle the majority of their cases without physical force or firearms.

But if it comes down to shooting someone, officers must try to remove their emotions from the situation and think clearly, Caudle said.

"Hopefully at that time you're thinking very clearly. It's very hard to do," the FBI agent said. "It's certainly an imperfect science. There's no way to make it perfect."

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