When the Thin Blue Line Faces a Life-and-Death Decision

A short while ago, Officers Scott Moody and Mark Raine stood nervously before the Burbank City Council because of what they did at the house on North Frederic Street on a tense night about three weeks earlier.

When Moody and Raine were dispatched to a domestic dispute between parents and a son, they expected to find an irate teen-ager--maybe high on drugs--making violent threats against mom and dad.

Instead, they discovered parents in their 70s trying to evict a balding son in his 40s who stood 5 feet 11 and weighed 230 pounds. He hadn’t had a steady job in more than a decade and spent his time watching late-night television, they said.

The parents lost patience that night because he tossed their personal belongings in the trash, police said. An argument ensued. The parents called the cops.

“When we got there, they were all in the kitchen,” Moody said recently. “He saw us and shouted ‘You can’t make me leave! I have nowhere else to go!’ ”

Shouting, the son suddenly turned and strode down a narrow hallway toward his bedroom. Both officers followed, imploring him to give up peacefully.

“He reached in his pocket and spun around waving an eight-inch dagger,” Moody said--a sudden incarnation of the police work cliche that it’s the family disputes that get you one of those fancy official funerals, with the 200 motorcycles and the badges masked in black.

“We both drew our guns and told him to drop it,” said Raine, who was standing just behind Moody.

“He said ‘I want to die. Kill me. I have nowhere to go.’ ”

Moody and Raine, Chief David Newsham pointed out later, were now well within their rights under department policy to gun down the chubby guy with the dagger, then and there. The knife was less than three feet away. They aimed.

It was, in a way, like two other recent cases in which peace officers fired their guns. Both times the assailant died but the controversy didn’t.

On Nov. 9, Los Angeles police fatally shot Efrain Lopez, who was high on PCP, nine times as he advanced on officers with a broom handle in Pacoima. The slaying set off nights of angry protests and confrontations outside the Foothill Division station. On Dec. 6, a sheriff’s deputy killed Christian Wayne Gwinnett when the 21-year-old charged him with a butcher knife in Lancaster. Relatives of both men criticized the shootings.

The law gives police the authority to shoot people, under some circumstances, but society retains the right to get extremely annoyed if that authority is loosely used. Relatives of the guy who winds up under the rubber sheet often think it was. The result for the officers can be anything from a department review to a crowd of protesters at the station house door to a murder trial.

Whatever time’s judgment on the Lopez and Gwinnett shootings, they demonstrate the irrevocable result of decisions that officers often make in the blink of an eye.

“We were waiting for the lunge,” Raine said.

“If he made a move, I’m sure we would have shot him,” Moody added.

But in that nervous gray area when an officer can either shoot or talk, both men kept their fingers on the triggers and chose their words carefully.

“We said ‘We’re not here to hurt you. Lets talk this out.’ He screamed a lot but after a while he started to listen,” Moody said.

The confrontation lasted about 15 minutes. “My arm was getting tired from holding up my gun. It seemed like forever,” Moody said.

“Finally, he agreed to put down the knife and leave if we would let him pack his things,” Raine said.

The man was taken to a hospital for psychological testing.

He was not charged with a crime and has since been released.

So in this case, the guy with the knife is alive to read this account of his actions and ponder his stupid recklessness. Because of the officers’ restraint, he has another chance to get his life together. Whether he will is another question.

“After it was all over he said, ‘I wish you had killed me,’ ” Moody said. “Someone like that really needs help.”

Police call these cases “suicide by cop,” when an armed person tries to force an officer to shoot him. Not all of them end with a psychological exam and a go-free pass.

The Burbank case didn’t get any media attention because stories like that almost never do. When police shoot someone, the media notices. No body, no story.

But Moody and Raine did have a quick moment of public recognition.

On Nov. 17, they stood nervously before the Burbank City Council for five minutes while Chief Newsham presented them with Professional Esteem Awards for not pulling the trigger when they could have.

In the audience were several uniformed colleagues, including Moody’s father, Art, a lieutenant on the Burbank force. Looking on proudly were Moody’s fiance and Raine’s wife and the two Raine kids.

At the appointed place in the agenda, Newsham spoke his piece. Good job, lads. Council members applauded politely.

Lt. Moody patted his son on the back and the knot of officers and friends drifted out the door, smiling.

The council moved quickly on to the next zoning matter. The reporters stopped doodling and began taking notes again.