Lost Confidence

Why? Why? Why? Will someone please tell me why a single man with a baseball bat in a room with several police officers ends up dead with a bullet to the head, with no officer injured in any way? (“Officer Kills Man During Response to Alleged Fight,” June 17) I realize that an escalation of the number of guns on our streets, with an attendant escalation of violent crime, has made police work more frustrating and dangerous, but that should in no way excuse, or explain, this kind of response.

I think most of us believe that police officers are trained to take a life, even that of a criminal, only as an absolute last option in a deadly situation, certainly not as a first option. Even if a weapons intervention was necessary in this case, what happened to the other options that good training should well have inculcated into the response habits of Officer Brad Phelps?

What about warning shots? What about disabling shots to the legs, or even, if really necessary, to the shoulders or mid-section? But a carefully aimed and executed bullet to the head? Come on!

There has never been a greater need for good, well-trained police officers than now, and never a greater need for public support of them, but incidents like this one produce disdain and cripple our confidence.

Hundreds of examples of fine police work take place every day in our city, often unnoticed because the good common sense of the officers involved effectively disarmed the situation. But all the good police work doesn’t make an exception like this one OK.

The toll is mounting and the frequency increasing; so please, whatever it takes to stop this inexcusable killing, let’s find it! And if a police chief lets it slide instead of condemning it and demonstrating correctional tactics, let’s see said chief out of a job.

ROBERT CULLEN

Ocean Beach