By Jerry
Cooper
In the early morning hours of
September 4, 2015, officers of the New York Police Department exchanged gunfire
in the streets of Brooklyn with an armed robbery suspect, Jerrol Harris. Harris reportedly fired “at least six” shots
at officers during the confrontation.
Most news stories referring to the
incident included in the caption the alleged fact that law enforcement officers
fired 84 shots at Harris. One of the
officers finally brought Harris down by shooting him in the leg.
I read several news reports detailing
how four officers initially fired a total of 52 rounds, and then later, two
other officers fired an additional 16 shots.
Now I’m not exactly a math wizard, so I pulled out the calculator. In doing so, I discovered that 52 plus 16
equals 68. None of the reports I read
accounted for the remaining 16 shots fired by police. We will just assume that some of us can’t do
math, and some can’t accurately report.
That’s alright, as the “84” is so widely reported, we will accept that
number.
The incident, most particularly the
hit-to-shot ratio on the part of law enforcement, conjures up visions of
Keystone Cops. Again, using my calculator, I find that in this incident, the
police only hit Harris with 1.19% of their shots. One of the reports I read emphasized this
point. The same report also pointed out
that one study reflects that on average, the NYPD hits suspects with only 34%
of their shots. One anti-police and
anti-gun website used these statistics to “prove” their point that police are
wildly throwing bullets on public streets every day, resulting in thousands of
civilian deaths each year. (Oh,
please.) Multiple reports concluded that
whereas the 1.19% hit rate is unsatisfactory, even the 34% figure reflects a
major problem. Does it? Let’s take a closer look at some of the
issues the NYPD officers might have dealt with on the streets of Brooklyn, as
well as similar concerns other officers have faced in armed confrontations.
First and foremost, officers who are shooting
at suspects are not shooting at paper, clay or metal targets, but at real live
human beings. Much research has been
done on the physiological and psychological aspects of law enforcement officers
and soldiers displaying a resistance to killing our own species. This research obviously flies in the face of
the rhetoric espoused by today’s activists and national media, who insist that
the police go out hunting every day for someone (especially black males) to
kill. Normal human beings are not, by
nature, close-range interpersonal killers.
(In the states I am familiar with, becoming certified as a law
enforcement officer involves undergoing psychological testing, and therefore, I
will pay deference to the great majority of law enforcement officers by
assuming they are “normal human beings.”)
Do these physiological and psychological factors have any effect on the
accuracy of rounds fired at suspects by law enforcement officers? You bet they do. It would require too much space to go into
greater detail in this matter herein, so I will simply refer the reader to Lt.
Dave Grossman’s books On Combat, and
the Pulitzer Prize winning On Killing. It has been my privilege to have attended
several of Grossman’s lectures. He is a
former West Point Professor of Military Science, and is an expert in the
subject of stress and performance.
As for the number of rounds fired by
the police in Brooklyn, I watched an online video of the incident in which I
could clearly hear at least part of the shots being fired. Although the shots came in quick sequence, I
did not observe that the rounds were fired as fast as I might have expected. In general, due to stress, officers do tend
to fire at a rate that is too fast. As a
use-of-force trainer, I constantly remind trainees of a couple of adages: “You can’t miss fast enough to hit”; and
the more tongue-in-cheek, “When there’s
lead in the air, there’s hope in the heart.”
My thinking is that something
interesting happened twenty or so years ago when most law enforcement agencies
transitioned from revolvers to semi-autos.
All of a sudden, we did not have pistols that held only five or six
rounds; we now had two to three times that many in the weapon, and many times
triple that amount on our belts. So,
what does one do with all these bullets?
Sadly, I do not recall any trainer or policy-maker addressing that
narrow issue. When we asked that
question, we were usually simply reminded that we should now be thankful we have
as much ammo as the bad guys on the street.
In our minds, it sort of leveled the playing field. I am afraid that on many occasions extra ammo
translates to “if you got ‘em, use ‘em.”
I am reminded of an incident locally to me in which three police
officers were engaged in a shootout with a couple of bank robbers. When the incident was over, it was determined
that only one of the robbers actually had a firearm. So in effect, three well-armed officers shot
it out with one bad guy. At the start of
shootout, each officer had four full magazines, including the one in the
weapon. The officers basically fired
most of their rounds in very rapid succession into the car the suspects were
using as cover, striking the areas where standard handgun ammo will not
penetrate to the other side. There was a
real possibility that the officers could have ran out of ammo. Fortunately, one of the officers realized
what was about to happen and established more disciplined fire among the officers.
When multiple officers are at the
scene of a shootout, there exists the possibility of sympathetic fire; that is,
an officer shoots because another officer is shooting, and he or she assumes
that the officer who first fires is justified in his actions. Under certain circumstances, sympathetic fire
may be called for in the military, but as far as my training takes me, never in
law enforcement. Every round fired by an
officer must be legally justified. I do
not know that any sympathetic fire took place in the incident in Brooklyn, but
I’m simply making the point that under stress, it can happen.
If 84 rounds were fired in the Brooklyn
incident, and one struck Jerrol Harris, then where did the other 83 rounds
terminate? This is a very real problem
and it should not be minimized. An
officer is responsible for all the rounds that leave his or her firearm. It is imperative that whenever possible, an
officer must assess the background before firing at a suspect. (Bad guys don’t play by such rules.) If bystanders are present, there are things
an officer can possibly do to mitigate this situation. Thankfully, the last time I checked, there
were no reports of any bystanders being struck by stray bullets in
Brooklyn. The time of early morning,
when very few people would be on the streets, was probably a factor here.
The fact that the shootout took place
in the early morning hours means that this incident occurred in “low light”
conditions. It is very probable that
this fact played a major role in the high number of misses by the police. I do not pretend to know to what extent NYPD
trains in low light conditions. (I
remember back when I was supervising a basic law enforcement training class,
there was a trainee who had previously been a Chief of some borough or township
in Pennsylvania. As we were going over
the training schedule on the first day of the program, the trainee/former Chief
asked if there was a mistake in the schedule.
He noticed where the class would spend several evening/nights at the firing
range. When I advised him that the
schedule was correct, he asked in a very sincere tone, “What are we going to do
at the range at night? Are we going to
shoot at night?” He said he had never
heard of such a thing. This happened to
be several years after the 1979 U. S. Supreme Court decision Popow v. City of Margate in which the
Court said firearms training that does not include low light conditions would
be “grossly inadequate.” Hopefully, any
such training negligence would not occur in a large, professional law
enforcement agency such as NYPD.)
In the Brooklyn shootout, at what
distance from officers to Harris were the rounds fired? Most law enforcement agencies today only
train out to 25 yards with handguns. I
do not know if this is the case with NYPD.
An officer firing at greater distances than that at which they are
trained can create negligence in the case of stray rounds, and make it less
likely he or she will hit their target.
Law enforcement officers are taught
to shoot at center mass of the suspect.
What is center mass? Center mass
is the largest part of the suspect that can be seen. At least one news report says that Harris
took cover behind a vehicle during part of the shootout. If this report is accurate, and if officers
either tried to shoot through the vehicle or tried to shoot at whatever body
part of the suspect was visible, then this would explain a great number of the
misses.
How many rounds can an officer fire
in one, two or three seconds? Even an
ill-trained person can easily empty a full magazine in three or four
seconds. A continuous feedback loop can
also occur when the officer fires under stress; in other words, he or she just
keeps doing what he or she is already doing, and in this case, pulling the
trigger. Additionally, once the brain
tells the finger to pull the trigger, the action cannot be stopped.
How many rounds do these principles
explain away?
What measures, in general, can a law
enforcement agency take to achieve a better than hit-to-shot ratio than 1:84?
Firearms training should include
instruction on how to set up disciplined fire in a shootout situation when
multiple officers are involved. At least
one agency with which I am familiar refers to the procedure as “rolling
thunder.” Other agencies may know it as
something different. In rolling thunder,
you want to slow the rate of fire down and make sure that not all officers are
firing at the same time. This should
also prevent a situation in which all the officers are simultaneously engaged
in reloading, which is a dangerous state of affairs.
Junked cars make for great firearms
training. What areas of a vehicle can an
officer actually shoot through to stop the threat on the other side? Likewise, what areas of the vehicle do you
not want to waste ammo firing at?
Windshields also deflect rounds.
(Hint: if you’re shooting through the windshield from the outside
[front], you may want to aim a tad high, as the projectile will many times take
on a slightly downward trajectory once it strikes the windshield.)
As most police shootings occur in low
light conditions, obviously firearms training must take place in such
conditions. This must be done on the
range and using firearms simulators. The
better simulators have the ability to make all training scenarios go dark,
requiring use of a flashlight to successfully negotiate the scenario.
Of course, “. . . when there’s lead in the air, there’s hope in the heart . . .”
is a myth. Trainers must get officers to
slow their rate of fire down and get on target.
One study conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows that
the location of the first round fired by an officer in a shooting is a good
predictor of the outcome. I am a firm
believer that we can learn an important lesson from my favorite Wild West hero,
Wyatt Earp. Concerning the fact that he
was never so much as grazed by a bullet, Earp explained to author and
journalist Adela Rogers St. John: “A good
gunman shouldn’t figger to pull the trigger but once. If he does, it means he’s in a hurry and the
chances are he don’t hit you. Any
gunplay I ever happened to get mixed up with, the winner was always the man who
stayed calm, kept his mouth shut and took his time.”
A thorough investigation and analysis
will determine what actually happened in the Brooklyn incident, and if NYPD
needs to make any adjustments in firearms or use of force training. It has been my purpose here to generally
address police shootings in which many rounds are fired, and not to analyze the
Brooklyn incident in particular.
And what of the statistic that on
average NYPD officers hit suspects with rounds fired only 34% of the time? If
this is in fact the case, then NYPD officers, trainers and administrators
deserve to be commended. Research shows
that a trained, experienced law enforcement officer will hit the suspect only
20% of the time. (This 20% success rate
also holds true for the military. Even
my personal experience using a firearms simulator with interactive video
scenarios to train officers bore this statistic out.) This rate is due to any number of factors, a
few of which have been presented here.
