Going Under the Gun in Deadly Force Test

Looking for a bodyguard?

Don’t call a San Diego City Council member.

Judy McCarty, Wes Pratt and John Hartley showed their ineptitude with a handgun Wednesday during a council committee hearing on the use of police deadly force.

Police Chief Bob Burgreen set up a simulated shooting scenario used at the police academy in which officers must react to a video showing a variety of scenes in which characters may attack police officers.

He invited the council members, all of whom were attending a Public Safety Committee meeting, to test their judgment with a remodeled .38-caliber Smith & Wesson filled with blanks.

McCarty, asked to back up an on-screen police officer talking to a bribery suspect, allowed the officer to get shot and the suspect to run behind the tree. McCarty got off three shots, one of which narrowly missed the suspect and two of which didn’t hit the screen.

As the suspect ran away, so did a frightened McCarty. She hid behind Hartley as a roomful of onlookers erupted into laughter.

Pratt, approaching two supposed fugitives in a bar, connected on his first shot as the woman on the screen aimed her gun. But the woman had fired a half-second earlier. Law enforcement officials concluded that Pratt probably would have died in real life.

On the second try, Pratt held off shooting an unarmed man and drew praise from police officers at the meeting.

In another scenario, Hartley fired at a man on a construction site who had struck another man with a pipe and who was coming after the councilman. But had a real pipe-wielding person been standing there, Hartley would have been struck before shooting.

On his next try, as two men ran out of a convenience store, Hartley shot at the second man before he could tell police he was the store manager.

Fortunately for the manager, Hartley missed him.

Burgreen said the demonstration had a purpose.

“It was certainly not my intention to embarrass any member of the council,” he said. “This was merely a demonstration . . . to give you some idea of the experience we are trying to give our officers.”

Burgreen spoke to the council in response to rising public criticism of the Police Department, whose officers have shot 23 people--nine fatally--this year. In four of the fatal shootings, officers were confronted by people with baseball bats, a garden stick and a cement trowel.

Burgreen said he expected to make changes in the department’s deadly force policy and is leading an internal task force that is studying whether officers are properly trained, carrying the right equipment and are making the right decisions before they shoot.

The police chief took over the task force when Deputy Chief Mike Rice, who had been leading the group, dropped out. Rice decided he could not longer be part of the study after his son, Charles, a police officer, shot and killed a man who police said had threatened him with a stick.

Burgreen said members of the task force already had studied deadly force policies of police departments throughout the nation.

This weekend, Burgreen will discuss lethal force during a conference in Tulsa, Okla., with representatives from 40 police departments in cities of more than 500,000 throughout the U.S. and Canada.

After a series of community forums, the chief will meet with members of his department and all the chiefs of police and the sheriff in San Diego County.

Once those meetings are completed, Burgreen said he will talk with two public review boards for ideas and then meet internally with top commanders to develop a new policy sometime in November.

Wednesday’s hearing renewed debate about what police officers are taught when they face a life-threatening situation.

Councilman Hartley said he believed the department has a “shoot-to-kill” policy and asked whether police officers deal differently when confronted with mentally ill suspects.

“It seems there could possibly be areas where we can control those individuals without shooting,” he said. “It seems like once you pull (the trigger) it’s shoot to kill and empty the holster.”

Burgreen said the department has a policy to deal with mentally ill suspects, which he did not describe, but said it is almost impossible to know whether someone with a weapon has such an illness or not.

Anita Wucinic-Turner of Mira Mesa asked whether police officers make more of an effort to wound suspects rather than kill them.

“I am shocked and outraged at the recent rash of fatal shootings where a shoot-to-kill policy was used rather than a shoot-to-disable policy to subdue and arrest a suspect,” she said.

Burgreen said the department policy is to train officers to shoot someone who poses a threat.

“You don’t shoot unless you have to protect your life and you are not going to protect your life if you shoot to wound,” Burgreen said. “Shooting to wound only works in the movies. You shoot to stop the threat.”

Police Department critics said the agency has gotten out of control.

“The one nice thing about the simulation machine is that if a police officer using it exercises poor judgment, nobody gets hurt,” said John Slotten, who has criticized the Police Department for years. “Unfortunately, too many times in the past, San Diego police officers have shot citizens for no justifiable reason.”