![]() ![]() "They do realize they are going to be investigated if there's a shooting, whether or not they're in the right."įor African-American police officers, the recent killings and protests highlight the challenge of balancing their professional identities with the concerns of minority communities. "That doesn't mean they think they're getting a break from them," Johnson said. He said officers generally thought that the grand jury process worked. The guys'll tell you, 'I knew I was going to die.' " "It's not, 'Let me go through my options.' It really becomes a visceral response to a threat. "Officers I've represented who've had to use deadly force, they'll tell you at some point it's an oh (expletive) moment," Johnson said. Johnson said some departments trained officers poorly, but by and large he thinks police academies do a good job of teaching officers that resorting to deadly force has to be the absolute last choice. But no one was ever happy."Ībout half the officers eventually leave the job, he said. "So sometimes you have to be the person to tell him, 'Hey, I have to let you know this guy died.' Some would be silent, some guys would cry, some would be sick. "Generally, the officer who was involved is isolated because they want to get his statement, so he oftentimes isn't aware of what happened to the suspect," Johnson said. One of the hardest parts of his job, he said, was breaking the news to the officer that the person he'd shot or injured had died at the hospital. He was assigned to represent them before grand juries and under questioning by their fellow police. Most officers are devastated when they kill someone on the job, even if they're convinced they had no other choice, said Bill Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, a coalition of police units and associations from across the United States.Īs a prosecutor in Miami, Johnson worked closely with officers who'd used deadly force. "We pull people out of wrecked cars, we hold people's hands when they're dying, we talk to 5-year-olds when they get raped, and one cop puts a chokehold on somebody and all of a sudden we're all racist killers," said Glennon, who owns Calibre Press, a company that trains police officers in the use of force. ![]()
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