Split-second decision to shoot can trigger lifelong consequences

By Conor Shine

Friday, March 23, 2012 | 2 a.m.

It’s a confrontation we all fear, and how you react to it can haunt you for the rest of your days: If you feel threatened by someone and you have a gun, do you use it to shoot and perhaps kill that person? And once you’ve made that decision, can you bear to live with the consequences?

A Summerlin resident this week made such a decision, firing at — and killing — a 19-year-old person he perceived as an intruder in his backyard.

Many Sun readers reacting to the story applauded the resident’s decision. They may have been persuaded by the revelation that the teenager had a criminal record. One less thug on the streets, the crass reasoning went; look how much money society was saved by his decision to kill the stranger in the backyard.

But it’s a slippery slope; consider the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February by a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain in Sanford, Fla., who said he felt threatened by the suspicious-looking — and unarmed — black teenager. The gunman, George Zimmerman, has not been arrested because of his claims to police that he fired in self-defense.

There seems little ambiguity in how a community sides when civilians decide to shoot in proclaimed self-defense. If the person who is shot turns out to have been a criminal, there is a sort of communal high-five for a job well done. But if the person shot is an innocent, there is condemnation of the shooter as a calloused murderer.

In both cases, though, the people doing the shooting will have to deal with their own emotional wreckage, one that will follow them long after the headlines are faded.

Police officers, because of their position, might have some expectation they’ll have to one day kill someone. The vast majority of citizens don’t expect to be involved in killing someone, but sometimes a person can suddenly and unexpectedly be thrust into such a situation.

Sgt. Tom Harmon, director of Metro’s Police Employee Assistance Program, has had years of experience counseling police officers involved in fatal shootings.

Officers, he notes, go through training to prepare for the possibility they’ll have to shoot someone, sometimes fatally.

“For an officer, the more training they have, the more skilled they are at defensive tactics, the more time they spend mentally preparing themselves for the possibility of having to use deadly force (the better they’re able to handle the situation),” Harmon said.

The training and mental preparation differentiates police officers from private citizens who experience shooting and killing someone.

“In general, if you have a citizen who’s minding their own business and they find themselves in fear of their life, they don’t have training to deal with the situation,” Harmon said.

Harmon, who is not a licensed professional, said a typical reaction from an officer involved in a fatal shooting is “a lot of shock. Oftentimes these things are very unexpected.

“What we offer for our folks, we respond immediately to the scene and provide peer counseling, which means someone to help them through what happens now, to help them process what has just occurred.

“Usually within a day or two, they are hooked up with a psychologist, a licensed professional, who can help them put this into perspective. That’s a mandatory process for police officers,” Harmon said.

Such processes aren’t mandatory in the public sphere.

“My best advice to anyone, especially to those in the general public, is to seek and accept help in the aftermath. There are great resources in the community, from professional counseling to therapists who are experts in critical incidents,” he said.

“This is a split-second decision that they’re going to have to live with for the rest of their lives,” Harmon said.