| 
Live
to Retire is a continuing series of articles written for
the PATC Briefing dedicated to officer safety and survival.
It is written with the intent to increase awareness of the
dangers faced by law enforcement professionals and provide
meaningful solutions and options to reduce risk. Comments,
article submissions, and critique are always sought from
Briefing subscribers.
Grim Realities
Although names may yet be added, the long list of peace
officers who made the ultimate sacrifice across this country
in 2004 has been tallied and posted. It’s not good
news: According to The Officer Down Memorial Page, one hundred
and fifty-three cops lost their lives in service to their
communities last year. Fifty-three were the victims of felonious
firearm attacks, four died from accidental gunfire; three
were inadvertently shot by fellow officers.
As is typically the case, the majority of law enforcement
deaths resulted from accidents and assaults involving motor
vehicles. Those who died in vehicle crashes or were accidentally
struck - or intentionally run down - by members of the motoring
public diminished the ranks of the thin blue line by seventy-two.
Twenty-one cops died while driving to calls for service
or while responding to requests for backup. And no one involved
in any of the situations those officers were rushing to
suffered a worse fate than the officers themselves.
California and Texas led the nation in officer deaths;
each suffering fourteen loses in ’04. Florida and
New York were also in double figures, losing twelve and
ten officers respectively.
The deadliest three-month period of the year was July through
September, during which forty-nine peace officers died in
duty-related incidents. Forty-six peace officers perished
during April, May and June. The last quarter of ’04
was a little kinder to the American law enforcement family:
Only twenty-four cops lost their lives between October 1st
and December 31st, and only seven of them were the victims
of felonious gunfire. If only so many other lives hadn’t
been stolen in similar fashion:
• The Wisner, Louisiana Police Department lost their
beloved Assistant Chief when he was and fatally shot with
his own sidearm after responding to a reported burglary
in progress on October 10th. “Putt” Linder became
the seventh officer to be disarmed and slain in ’04
in the U.S., and the last of five Louisiana peace officers
to be murdered last year.
• On October 14th, a Marion County, Ohio deputy was
murdered when he made contact with two pedestrians responding
to check on a vehicle that was reportedly disabled. Deputy
Brady Whitfield was one of nine officers felled by gunfire
across the nation last year while conducting vehicle checks
or after effecting traffic stops. Three of those deadly
attacks, including one occurring in Pendergrass, Georgia
on December 29th that claimed the life of Patrolman Chris
Ruse, came after high speed pursuits.
• A Special Agent with the Wisconsin Department of
Justice was shot and killed during a robbery attempt in
the parking lot of a convenience store on November 5th.
Agent Jay Balchunas had stopped to get a cup of coffee when
he was accosted by two men as he returned to his car.
o A Los Angeles County Office of Public Safety Captain and
a DC Metro Police Sergeant met similar fates last year when
they were shot after being targeted for armed robberies
while off-duty.
• On November 11th, an off-duty Forsythe County,
North Carolina Reserve Sergeant responded to a report of
shots fired occurring near his home and was fatally shot
by a suspect who had just killed a man and a woman with
whom he had on ongoing feud. Sgt. James Johnson’s
son-on-law, also an off-duty reserve deputy who responded
to the scene from his residence nearby, was wounded during
a gunbattle with the suspect.
• A Bristol, Tennessee police officer was gunned
down November 27th when he entered a residence alone to
investigate a domestic dispute. Sadly Officer Mark Vance
was not the first or the last policeman to be murdered after
arriving at the scene of a reported family disturbance in
’04. Six other cops sustained lethal gunshot injuries
during these volatile confrontations between February and
September, and two others were slain in December:
o Otero County, New Mexico Deputy Robert Hedman was shot
and killed on December 18th by a man who’d already
murdered the woman he lived with. The deputy was fired on
when he went to the rear of the residence after the suspect
refused to allow him and his partner to enter at the front
door.
o On December 29th, Officer Peter Lavery of the Newington,
Connecticut Police Department was shot and held hostage
by a gunman in the suspect’s basement. When a SWAT
Team made entry the following day, they found that Officer
Lavery had died and his captor, a former state corrections
officer, had committed suicide.
Murder by Ambush
Every year an alarming number of officers meet their demise
in ambush situations or very soon after their initial encounter
with criminal suspects.
Based on publicized accounts concerning the seven policemen
murdered by gunfire in the last three months of ’04,
it appears that the fatal attacks came quickly and unexpectedly,
proving seven times over that it’s the bad guy who
owns the tactical advantage. If only this point hadn’t
been driven home so many times throughout the year; sixteen
cops were greeted with fatal gunfire last year while either
still in their police cars or soon after exiting them:
• Two officers were ambushed in Athens, Alabama,
on January 2nd when they arrived in separate vehicles at
an unknown trouble call.
• A sheriff’s detective was felled by a shotgun
blast on February 12th in North Carolina when he contacted
a man that had been shooting the weapon in a field.
• Two of Detroit’s finest were fired upon while
sitting in their cruiser after making a vehicle stop on
February 16th. Both died from their wounds.
• On March 12th, a deputy in North Carolina was shot
repeatedly as he arrived at the scene of a family disturbance.
• Two deputies in Pennsylvania were left to die on
the driveway of a residence where they’d gone to serve
an arrest warrant on March 31st.
• When deputies in Buncombe County, North Carolina
attempted to serve a mental health commitment order on a
man on April 4th , the suspect fired a shotgun blast from
his place of hiding in the bushes outside his home. A sergeant
was fatally struck.
• A San Francisco cop was murdered by a pedestrian
who wheeled and opened fire with a rifle when the officer
called to him from his police vehicle on April 10th.
• In Sterling Heights, Michigan, an officer was shot
and killed as he sat in his marked patrol car writing a
report on June 5th .
• A Baltimore City, Maryland Police Officer chased
two men on foot after responding to a disturbance. The suspects
ran into a liquor store and as the cop approached the business,
he was fatally shot.
• A suspected drunk driver being pursued by a Babylon
Bay, New York Constable on July 16th drove to his home and
after arming himself with a shotgun, ambushed the officer
from an upstairs window.
• On July 17th two patrol officers in Puerto Rico
heard gunfire at a market. When they went to investigate
they were fired upon by robbery suspects caught in the act.
One of the officers was killed.
• A Bossier City, Louisiana patrolman was ambushed
as he stood at the front door of a home where a woman had
reported a domestic dispute on August 9th. The woman’s
65-year-old husband, said to be unstable and suicidal, killed
the officer with two shotgun blasts before killing himself.
• On August 18th, four Indianapolis Police Officers
were shot as they arrived in a neighborhood where a deranged
man was blasting away with an assault rifle. One of them
was mortally wounded by rounds fired through the windshield
of his patrol car from a distance of more than a hundred
yards.
Danger Beyond the Doorway
The situations just described prove that those willing to
maim and murder peace officers oftentimes act as soon as
the opportunity to do so presents itself. Officers may be
targeted in the street, on the driveway, at the doorway
or any place in between. And the danger certainly doesn’t
diminish beyond the threshold. Peace officers entering dwellings
and other structures in search of suspects always face peril.
As proof:
• The team leader of a Philadelphia court’s
warrant team was slain on March 19th and two of his teammates
were wounded by gunfire when they entered a residence in
search of a man who failed to appear to face rape charges.
• June 17th is a date that’ll forever be remembered
by the men and women of the Birmingham, Alabama Police Department.
On that day three ‘Magic City’ officers were
murdered while trying to serve a warrant at a row house.
• A New Orleans Police Officer was shot repeatedly
after she forcibly entered the bedroom of a man named in
a mental health commitment order that she and he partner
were trying to serve.
• A Broward County, Florida Detective was mortally
wounded by rifle fire on August 19th as he and other members
of a task force served a search warrant at the home of a
man involved in child pornography.
• Two Phoenix, Arizona Officers were murdered by
an emotionally unstable man as they forced entry into his
apartment on August 28th. The suspect had shot another tenant
and the officers believed that he might be holding another
hostage. After killing the two officers and wounding a third
in a hail of gunfire, the suspect committed suicide.
• In El Paso, Texas, an officer who’d graduated
from the academy in late August died on September 25th after
being shot by an intoxicated man that confronted him and
his training officer in the garage of the suspect’s
home.
Give Thanks…. and Thought
If you and those with whom you serve survived 2004 without
becoming the victim of violence, give thanks…but also
give thought to all those encounters that could’ve
ended much differently. Give thought to what you did, things
you might’ve done, and what you’ll do when you
again face those situations that steal so many law enforcement
lives year after year.
Perhaps more cops would survive if only they acknowledged
that every call, every citizen contact, and every task often
viewed as mundane - like driving to the location where help
is needed and approaching the door to make contact - harbored
such danger. If only…
Doyle “D.T.” Wright
is a Senior Instructor for the Public Agency Training Council.
He retired from the Riverside County, California, Sheriff’s
Department, and since 1998 has traveled throughout the country
to provide law enforcement training related to officer survival,
high risk warrant planning and execution, police action
shootings and tactical response to dynamic events.
Previous Live to Retire Articles can be seen here
|
