Guns 101

By William Kenny
\Times Staff Writer

Police officers can face weeks of harsh media criticism, months or years of legal scrutiny and a lifetime of regret after they fire their guns in the line of duty.
In many, if not a vast majority of cases, however, circumstances allow mere fractions of a second for officers to make the life-altering and potentially fatal decision to shoot or not to shoot.
In fact, “decision” may be the last term one should use to characterize what goes on in a cop’s mind when responding to a seemingly innocuous domestic disturbance, only to find himself staring down the barrel of a semiautomatic handgun. In truth, it’s a disciplined reaction, driven by the most basic instinct of self-preservation and harnessed only through many hours of expert instruction and individual training.
Leaders in the law-enforcement community try to convince the public of that every time an officer’s bullet strikes down a pistol-wielding drug pusher on a downtown street, or even strays into the nearby home of a terror-stricken family. And when the drug suspect’s pistol turns out not to be a pistol at all, but rather something similarly dark and shiny like a cell phone, community skepticism can run rampant.
At times like that, and even in the absence of an immediate crisis as such, it’s important to remember the factors at work any time a cop responds to a 911 call or merely sets foot outside the station, police insist.
To that end, supervisors and instructors in the Philadelphia Police Academy’s firearms-training unit last week invited members of the news media to see how local cops prepare for life-or-death confrontations and to experience a few of those situations — if only in a make-believe setting.
The academy’s Firearms Training Simulator (FATS) is like a PlayStation game on steroids. It features more than 200 videotaped scenarios in which officers may be called upon to draw and fire their weapons. Cops use a modified 9mm Glock to shoot a laser beam at a life-size screen. At the end of the scene, a computer tells them how many shots they fired, how many struck the hostile suspects, if the wounds were fatal and if innocent bystanders got caught in the crossfire.
The system, online at the academy for about three years, is meant to give recruits as well as veteran cops a feel for what they might encounter on the streets — without the flying lead and lifetime of public scrutiny, of course.
“We keep records that the individual (officer) received training, but there’s no pressure on them,” said Capt. Mark Fisher, head of the academy’s firearms instruction. “This is where we want them to make mistakes and learn from mistakes, so they don’t repeat them on the street.”
One crucial and poignant lesson is that the concept of right or wrong as often portrayed by second-guessers doesn’t exist on the street. A cop never knows for sure what a criminal suspect will do or is capable of doing, so the officer must use skilled perception and assessment to gauge imminent threat.
“That’s a decision you have to make, and you have to live with it,” Fisher said, responding to a reporter’s question about a scenario involving a man wildly swinging a machete with one arm and cradling a baby with the other.
In that particular scene, against the backdrop of an alley behind an apartment building, the suspect continued to wave the blade wildly while walking toward the camera. A reporter, playing the role of cop, shot once, missing the child by inches while wounding the suspect fatally in the chest.
Was the reporter wrong for firing when she did with the child so close? Perhaps. On the other hand, neither the child nor the officer may have survived if the reporter hadn’t reacted when she did.
In real life, police are trained to operate by various rules of thumb. For example, verbal threats by a weapon-wielding suspect against an officer or another person should always be taken as an expression of his intent. Similarly, pointing a gun at an officer is a surefire way to draw lethal force.
In a case involving a knife or other hand-to-hand type of weapon, officers are taught the “21-foot rule.” That is, studies have shown that the average person can traverse 21 feet in about 1.5 seconds. That’s the same amount of time that it takes a “skilled” police officer to draw his firearm and fire a single, accurate shot.
Therefore, anytime an armed suspect gets within 21 feet of an officer, the officer should consider himself in lethal danger.
“From twenty-one feet, within a second, they can be on top of you, and with a knife, (a suspect) can do a lot of damage,” Fisher said.
This is not to say that the cop should start shooting.
According to Fisher, officers are trained in a “force continuum” that may help them defuse a confrontation before it becomes life-threatening. Their arsenal includes voice commands, physical holds, batons, pepper spray and Taser guns. Yet everything still relies on the cop’s judgment and ability to make split-second decisions.
When lethal force is necessary, however, cops must be prepared to use it. To that end, recruits spend three weeks at the academy’s outdoor pistol range and must fire at least 3,000 live rounds in day and night conditions to “qualify” on their service weapon.
They shoot at paper targets as well as on a tactical range with pop-up targets. That’s the marksmanship portion. Also, the academy uses a “running man” range, with more moving targets, and the FATS device.
That’s just the start of the department’s firearms training program. Veteran cops use the ranges, too, as they work toward annual certification. Meanwhile, those in specialty units like SWAT, Highway Patrol and narcotics units undergo more routine training because of the nature of their jobs.
Of the department’s 6,500 officers, about 1,200 trained on the FATS device last year, including all of those involved in on-duty shootings. Also, about 3,400 cops trained on the running-man range, while 3,000 used the pop-up range.
Cops are permitted to use the paper-target range on their personal time, too. Open sessions are held three times a day, five days a week. The department allows each officer two boxes of ammunition per session.
As Fisher explained, there are no guarantees for police officers what will happen to them on any given day while on duty or in the aftermath of an on-duty shooting. Yet the department expects its officers to be able to justify any actions they take.
A cop should shoot someone “if you feel threatened and can articulate why you shot this individual,” Fisher said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not going to get in trouble or the DA’s not going to prosecute (you). You still have to answer to a mistake.” ••
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com