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With Brian McKenna
ILEETA Use of Force Journal  
 

Description of the Incident

Officer Dave Johnston stepped into his squad car and pulled the door shut behind him, cutting off the biting wind that was slicing through his uniform. He had just completed an assignment, and was starting to pick up the microphone to clear from the call when he heard the dispatcher assign two cars to a domestic disturbance in his sector. The dispatcher advised that the female caller had reported that her intoxicated husband had just left the house in his bare feet, and was driving around the block in the family car.

“Go ahead,” he answered. “The complainant called back and said her husband is back home now.” It looked like it would be one of those nights. Johnston, an officer with seven year’s experience on the busy department, had handled his share of family fights. He worked in a large suburb bordering one of the busier districts in the city to its east. The suburb contained some tough neighborhoods, and domestic disturbances were not uncommon in those areas. He was tempted to let the other officers handle the call; a crazy drunk who was mad enough to drive around barefoot in this cold weather could cause a lot of problems. It wasn't the kind of thing he wanted to handle this close to the end of his shift, but he didn't like pushing work off on others. He pulled the microphone from its clip, waited for the radio traffic to clear, and advised the dispatcher he would take the assignment. The dispatcher acknowledged, disregarded the original primary unit, and told Officer Gregg Foster1, a 36-year-old four-year veteran of the department, to proceed as the assist car.

The husband, a normally law-abiding family man named Cedric Lewis, was having a bad time of it. He had been drinking hard -- much harder than usual -- and taking prescription meds on top of the booze as his marriage seemed to crumble down around him. . The fight had started over something so minor that he had forgotten what it was, but somehow it had mushroomed out of control. She had said something that had given him the strong impression that she wanted to leave him. The thought had infuriated him, and nothing she said could convince him otherwise. It had only gotten worse, and eventually he had walked out of the house to get away and clear his head, but that hadn’t helped either. As he cruised down the cold streets in his bare feet, he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that his marriage was falling apart. Still burning with anger, he had come back home only to find out that his wife had called the police. Now the cops were going to come into his home, embarrass the hell out of him in front of the kids, and tell him how to run his life. He retreated to his bedroom, his anger mounting even as he told himself to calm down…. Johnston pulled his squad car to the curb in front of the house next door to the Lewis’, stepped out into the biting cold, and walked across the steep lawn to the Lewis’ front steps. Like many homes in the neighborhood, the residence was an older building of solid, red brick construction. An expansive brick porch, spanning the entire length of the front of the house, stood fortress-like several feet above the lawn. He climbed the steps, crossed the porch to the front door and took up a position to one side to listen.

He had barely reached the spot when the door came open. A young woman, pleasant in manner but visibly upset, stood in the doorway. “Did you call us, ma’am?” Johnston asked. “Yes I did, officer,” she replied in a shaky voice. “It’s my husband. We’ve been arguing for hours, and he’s very upset.” She stood to one side and invited him in.

Johnston stepped cautiously through the doorway while scanning for signs of the husband. Two young boys, one three years old and the other eight, sat in an obvious state of confusion and fear on a couch along the opposite wall, but there was no sign of the man. “Where is your husband, Mrs…” he asked. “I’m sorry; I didn’t get your name.” The young woman attempted a smile as tears pooled in her eyes. “I’m Yolanda, Yolanda Lewis.” “Where is he, ma’am?” Johnston asked. He heard a car coming to a stop outside, and glanced over his shoulder to see Foster’s unit stopping behind his.

“He’s in our bedroom,” Mrs. Lewis answered, cocking her head toward the doorway behind her for emphasis. The doorway led to the adjoining dining room. Just inside the dining room was another doorway that opened into a dim hallway that led to the bedroom. Keeping one eye on the doorway, Johnston asked, “What’ve you been arguing about?”Her husband was drunk, she told him, much drunker than she had ever seen him before. And much angrier. There was fear in her tear-filled eyes as she explained that he was frightening her with the intensity of his anger and his irrational belief that she planned to leave him. As Foster came up to the door and stepped inside, Mrs. Lewis started to plead with both officers not to leave her alone with her husband. “Please get him away from me,” she sobbed, “I’m afraid of what he might do if you leave.” At that moment, Johnston heard a door open down the hall, followed by angry footsteps. He tensed, hand hovering near his holstered gun. Lewis stepped through the doorway, empty handed but fuming with anger. “Get the hell outa my house!” he growled through a drunken slur, “you got no business here, botherin’ me and my family.”

Both officers tried to explain that they couldn’t leave until the situation was under control, but Lewis, his voice cracking with anger, just repeated his demand again and again. The officers let him blow off steam for a while, and with time their persistence started to pay off. Although Lewis still exhibited a lot of anger, his attitude gradually cooled to a more manageable level. He was now focusing most of his attention on Foster, and Foster seemed to be handling him well.

Now that Foster was having some success with the angry man, Johnston decided to remove Mrs. Lewis from the immediate area so he could get more information from her. He turned to her and motioned for her to step into the dining room. As they stepped through the doorway, Cedric Lewis’ angry voice still echoing behind them, Johnston started to question the frightened woman about her husband’s state of mind.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” Mrs. Lewis answered, “I never seen him like this before.” There was desperation in the woman’s eyes as she insisted that she didn’t want to be left alone with her husband. When pressed, she finally admitted that Lewis had shoved her around and roughed her up a bit during the argument. There was no mandatory adult abuse law at the time, so arrests for domestic violence were rarely made. Nevertheless, with the woman’s safety and that of her children at state, Johnston saw no alternative but to arrest Lewis. He asked Mrs. Lewis if she would be willing to sign a complaint against her husband, explaining that it was the only way to keep him away from her and the children. Reluctantly, she agreed.

 “Good. I think that’s the only thing we can do right now, ma’am,” Johnston said as he pulled a notebook and pen from his shirt pocket. “I just have to get some more information from you. How do you spell your last name?” With his attention now focused on getting the information for his report, Johnston momentarily lost track of his partner and the angry man with him ….

Suddenly, like an enormous church bell, high-pressure sound clanged through his skull! Dreamlike, the floor drifted up toward him. There was a surrealistic intensity of detail in the baseboards as they came closer. Then he was on his back, looking up at the ceiling. Again, unimaginable detail filled his view as he gazed dizzily upward at the seam where the wall met the ceiling. Stunned with shock, confusion and sensory overload, he lay motionless on the cold, hard floor.

A 12-gauge deer slug had slammed into the right side of Johnston’s neck, ripped forward along his lower right jaw, and exiting near the chin. Although missing the carotid artery and jugular vein by a mere fraction of an inch, the huge chunk of lead had shredded bone and tissue along its path.

Unknown to Johnston and for reasons still unknown, Foster had briefly let his guard down and allowed Lewis to leave the room without following him or letting Johnston know what was happening. Lewis had calmly stepped out of the living room, crossed the corner of the dining room, and disappeared into the darkened hallway. Now out of sight of both officers, he had moved to the hall closet, reached inside, and withdrawn a 12-gauge pump from the corner. He had left a shell in the chamber -- a practice he had adopted a few years earlier after his home was burglarized -- making it unnecessary to reveal his deadly intentions by racking the slide. Without a sound, he had returned to the doorway he had just entered and found his first target just where he knew it would be. The target was Johnston, his back still to the doorway as he spoke to Lewis’ wife. With swift brutality, he had leveled the shotgun at the back of the unsuspecting officer’s head and fired…. Without hesitation, Lewis racked in another round as he turned the deadly 12-gauge on Foster and fired again. Foster was already reaching for his holstered revolver when the deer slug ripped through his left arm near the elbow, nearly severing the limb. Foster stumbled out the front door as he completed his draw, then crossed the porch and stumbled down the steps, falling facedown into the cold grass. Lewis followed and moved to the front of the porch as the gravely wounded officer valiantly fought to get up. But before Foster could rise, Lewis bent over porch’s low brick wall and fired again! The blast struck Foster in the back, just below the left shoulder blade, tearing through his left lung and severing the aorta just below his heart.

Even this had failed to quench the enraged man’s lust for blood. He racked the slide yet again, ran back into the dining room, and pointed the shotgun at Johnston. With the muzzle centered squarely on the center of the defenseless officers’ chest, he pulled the trigger. But the only sound was an empty click -- the fourth round had jammed, saving Johnston from almost certain death.

Although horrified by what her husband had just done, Mrs. Lewis had the presence of mind to run up to him, pull the shotgun from his grasp, and go to the phone to call the police. While Mrs. Lewis dialed the phone, her husband, still fuming with anger, began dragging Johnston toward the front door. But then he heard Mrs. Lewis talking to the dispatcher. Dropping the severely wounded officer, he ran over to his wife, snatched the receiver out of her hand, and calmly announced, "I just shot two of your cops.” Then, with hot anger rising in his voice, he added, "Come and get 'em outta here. I don't want ‘em dying in my house!" After hanging up the phone, Lewis stepped outside and waited for the responding officers. Officer Al March was the first to arrive. As he stopped his patrol car in the middle of the street, he saw Lewis standing at the front door. The man was unarmed and seemed calm as he motioned at March to come up onto the porch. Not noticing Officer Foster's fallen form in the dark shadows next to the steps, March raced past him and up the stairs. As he ran across the porch toward Lewis, he saw Johnston lying on his side just inside the front door. Johnston, his upper body soaked in blood from the devastating wound to his neck and face, appeared to be mortally wounded. The nightmare before him confirmed March’s worst fears. His mind swimming with grief and anger, he grabbed Lewis, slammed him down onto the porch, and cuffed him.

Meanwhile, Dave Johnston was alternately slipping into deep unconsciousness, and then drifting back into a world of odd intensity and detail. Someone was throwing him into the back of an ambulance. Now briefly jolted back to consciousness, he felt the vehicle bouncing madly down the roadway. Consciousness returned once more, his bare back now pressing down on cold metal. He was lying nude on a metal table in a sterile-looking room, and a man in green scrubs was hosing him down. The horrifying thought of an autopsy table came to mind. He tried to cry out, to let someone know he wasn’t dead, but the words wouldn’t come! Then he mercifully fell back into unconsciousness. Only later did he learn that he had been bleeding so profusely from his neck wound that the ER doctors couldn’t determine if he had been shot anywhere else. The man in the green scrubs had been a doctor who was washing the blood away to inspect him for additional wounds.

Officer Johnston eventually recovered from his extensive wounds, but it took more than a year before he could return to work on limited duty, and another six months before he could go back on the street. He has since retired after a distinguished career with the same department. Gregg Foster had not been so lucky. The deer slug to his torso had caused internal injuries too extensive to survive, and he succumbed to his wounds while en route to the hospital.

Cedric Lewis was later convicted of Murder and Assault with Intent to Kill, and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 50, with no parole.

Author’s Personal Note

Although I never had the honor of meeting Gregg Foster, his death had a profound effect on me. His was the first police funeral I ever attended, and it changed my life. Through sheer coincidence, I sat just two or three rows behind Officer Foster’s family during his funeral. As the emotion-laden service went on, my attention was drawn to his wife and kids – the silent sobs, the grief-stricken expressions, the kindly arms of other family members cradling them for comfort. All these things hit me hard. How could some animal do this to the family of a brother officer?

But the thing that affected me most was the procession at the close of the service. Officer Foster’s little boy -- handsomely clad in a dark suit -- hung onto the coat tail of a similarly dressed man walking next to him. With his mother in tears nearby, the little boy looked weakened and confused by the events unfolding around him. I will never know if he fully comprehended what was happening at the time, but I do know that his life had been changed forever. And so had the lives of his mother and everyone else who loved Gregg Foster.

It was at that moment that I decided no one would ever do that to my family, and I would do whatever I could to shield other police families from the same fate as well. As time went on, I devoted a good part of my time to writing “Officer Down” in the hope that its lessons would help keep America’s Finest safe. You folks are the best America has to offer. You are the ones others count on in times of fear and danger, and you fulfill that vital role with unwavering commitment and courage. You deserve to go home safe at the end of every shift, to make it to retirement so you can look back on a noble career of service to others. Honor the names of the fine officers whose stories have appeared in Officer Down by learning as much as you can from their triumphs and tragedies. You owe them that much, and so much more.

 Reflections

 1. Domestic disturbances generally take much longer to handle than other high-risk calls, which makes it especially difficult to maintain a high level of awareness from start to finish. What other factors pose unusual risks for officers when handling these calls? What tactical options are available to help deal with these dangers? What else can we trainers do to help prepare our officers to handle domestics more safely?

 2. Positioning is crucial to officer safety when handling domestics, because each officer must be in position to control one disputant while also providing cover for his partner. The author believes the best way to for officers to position themselves is to separate the disputants, and then move into positions that allow them to maintain visual contact with one another. The officers should stand facing each other with the disputants between them, and the disputants positioned so they are facing the officers (see figure #1). This allows the officers to keep an eye on each other while conversing with the disputants, and also makes it harder for one disputant to see what the other is doing. In addition, the officers should stand offset to one side of their disputants so they can move past them more quickly if one officer needs to help the other. When coupled with a high level of danger awareness and readiness to act, this tactic allows the officers to effectively cover one another while dealing with the disputants. Do you agree that this is an effective tactic? If so, what is the best way to train officers to use it? If not, what other option/s should officers be trained to use?

 3. Do you agree that it is a good idea to ask if there are any weapons on the premises when responding to domestic disturbances? Should the responding officer/s assume that the disputant is being truthful if he gives a negative response to this question? What should officers be trained to expect when they are told that no weapons are present?

 4. The suspect in this case demonstrated an unusually high emotional level, and his wife appeared to be afraid to be left alone with him. Were there any other signs that this family dispute was especially dangerous? How can we do a better job of teaching our officers to scan for such danger signs?

 5. This case dramatically illustrates the danger of allowing a disputant to leave the officer’s sight. Besides presenting officers with case studies like this one, how can we help ensure that officers maintain a visual on all disputants at all times? What should they be trained to do if a disputant leaves their sight, or otherwise appears to be attempting to go into an area where he can access a weapon?

 6. In this case, Officer Johnston depended upon Officer Foster to keep an eye on the suspect. Although we must be able to trust our partners, is it really wise to become overly dependent upon them for our own safety? Who is ultimately responsible for one’s own safety? How do we emphasize this to our officers?

7. The suspect in this case had never been arrested before, and was considered to be a respectful, law-abiding family man. This is not unusual; only 19 percent of the known assailants identified in police killings over the past ten years had prior arrests for assaulting an officer or resisting arrest, and 20 percent of them had no arrest record at all.2 How important is it to emphasize to our officers that, although it is important to consider a subject’s criminal history, we must not let our guard down when dealing with apparently law-abiding citizens -- that we must focus on behavior rather than preconceived notions about who is dangerous and who is not?

Footnotes
1. The incident recounted here is true, but most of the names were changed to insure the privacy of those personally involved. Likewise, in order to preserve confidentiality and clarity, some facts may have been altered slightly, but the essential elements of the story remain unchanged. 2. F B.I. (2007). Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted 2005. Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Justice, table 19. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2006/table19.html> at 3 July 2008. 3. Ibid, table 44. Brian McKenna recently retired after 30 years with the Hazelwood (MO) Police Department, where he was assigned to the patrol division as a shift supervisor (lieutenant), and also served as an in-service trainer and lead firearms instructor. He is a certified police instructor and holds a Master’s Degree in human resource development. Brian authors Street Survival Magazine’s “Officer Down” column, a regular feature that analyzes officer involved shootings for key learning points. He also teaches officer safety courses and consults for Winning Edge Training. This article was derived from an article that originally appeared in “Officer Down.” Brian can be reached at BrianMcKenna@ileeta.org, 314-921-6977 or 314- 941-2651.
 

 

The Influence Of The Investigator's Demeanor On A Subject's Behavior By John E. Reid & Associates One of the principles of behavior symptom analysis taught in the Reid Technique is that the investigator's demeanor has a significant influence on the subject's behavior. For example, an investigator who becomes accusatory, authoritative and demeaning during an interview will predictably cause a subject, regardless of his innocence, to exhibit symptoms of fear, anxiety or resentment It is precisely because of this that we emphasize the importance of conducting an interview in a non-accusatory tone and to assume a compassionate and understanding demeanor during an interrogation. When an interview or interrogation boils down to a session where the suspect is simply accused of lying and asked to re-tell his story, the ability to detect deception through analysis of the subject's verbal and nonverbal behavior is greatly reduced. Under this circumstance the investigator is left to evaluate information such as inconsistencies in a subject's story or unintentional verbal slip-ups. Furthermore, because of the subject's emotional state, the investigator has no way of knowing if the inconsistencies in the subject's story are coming from a confused deceptive subject or a frustrated and anxious truthful one. In truth, we do not know what an innocent or guilty subject's behavioral responses might be during accusatory questioning because that has never been a practice of the Reid Technique -- our interviews are always conducted in a non-accusatory fashion and our interrogations, while they start out with a clear statement of involvement, quickly become a compassionate endeavor in an attempt to understand why the suspect committed the crime. During an interview we have never accused a suspect of lying to us. Similarly, during an interrogation we would never admonish a subject for lying to us and make him go through his account again. Perhaps these techniques do result in confessions and are used successfully by other investigators. However, they do not represent techniques advocated or used by John E. Reid and Associates and, therefore, we do not have any guidelines to offer with respect to how a guilty or innocent subject may respond to them. A recent laboratory study conducted by Kassin and Fong support our teachings in this area.(1) Video-taped interviews of students who were assigned either guilty or innocent roles in committing a mock crime were analyzed by student observers. These interviews consisted of eliciting an initial statement from the student but then the investigator became angry and said, "Dammit, stop lying to me! We caught you cold. Now tell the truth." The subject was then told to restate his alibi. The average interview lasted less than five minutes. Half of the student observers who reviewed the video-taped interviews were "untrained" and relied on common sense (inconsistencies in accounts, verbal slip-ups, general nervousness) to formulate opinions of the subject's truthfulness and the other half were "trained" in behavior analysis by watching a 30 minute video describing some of the behavior symptoms used to evaluate a subject during a non-accusatory interview. The study produced two predictable findings: first, neither the trained nor untrained student observers were able to identify truthful or deceptive subjects above chance levels. Second, the trained students, who relied upon behavior symptoms elicited during a non-accusatory interview, performed statistically poorer than the untrained students. In conclusion, a subject's behavior during the course of an interview or interrogation can be influenced by many factors such as the environment in which the behavior was elicited, the subject's intelligence or age, the subject's emotional state and, of course, the investigator's demeanor. Each of these variables need to be considered when deciding how much weight to afford behavioral observations. To the extent possible, the investigator should eliminate or minimize the effects of these variables. For example, an investigator should try to conduct an interview in an environment free from outside or internal distractions, a subject who appears angry or upset should be calmed down before an attempt is made to elicit specific behaviors of truth or deception. Most certainly, the investigator should not do or say anything during an interview that would place the suspect on the defensive or cause unnecessary anxiety or apprehension. Kassin, S. & Fong, C. ""I'm Innocent!": Effects of Training on Judgments of Truth and Deception in the Interrogation Room," Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 23, No. 5, 1999.

  

 

By A.S. Michael 
Policereportwriting.net  

When a new officer hits the streets in the Field Training Program, they are like a new puppy.   Curious, watching everyone, sniffing at everything and ready to wet themselves at the first loud, scary noise.  This enthusiasm is great for getting out and communicating with people.  However, sometimes the training officer discovers later that all that was communicated between the new officer and a victim was never documented.  In their rush to talk to people, appear empathetic and be helpful, the new officer forgot to write important stuff down. Things such as . . .names, dates and addresses.  Sometimes only a few of these necessary items were forgotten.  Sometimes you wonder, by the contents of their notepad, if the new officer was even there.   Fortunately, this is an easy fix.  Time will take care of the puppy dog enthusiasm.  A good surprise fight will take the nicey-nicey right out of any new officer.  But, another less painful fix is getting organized.

By getting organized, I do not mean perfect files of paperwork, with neatly segmented books of notes.  What I mean by organization is very simply, organizing yourself to take notes.   A great way to do this is to get a copy of your department’s main incident report or form.  Copy, in order from the form, onto your notepad what information is needed to fill this form out. Meaning, if the first blank on the form is asking for location, write  Location:   at the top of a new page in your notepad.  Continue this down the page in your notepad, following the exact order the blanks are listed on your report form. What you will end up with is this:  a great set of cheat notes to keep your mind organized.  This keeps you moving forward without embarrassing stumbling around, looking like a rookie.  And, a consistent method for asking for, documenting and retrieving information later. Knowing you have this set up and ready to go will allow you to relax and begin to practice those interview skills.  This leads to even better, more detailed reports at any type of crime scene, no matter how wild, crazy, dirty or disgusting.   

 

 

 

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