A Leatherneck Look at Police Shootings

A Marine Corps drill instructor, exploding with wisdom, once told a platoon of recruits that it didn’t take a lot of muscle to pull a trigger but it did take a lot of good sense to know when to pull it.

It was an announcement related to an incident that had occurred at a firing range--a recruit for some reason squeezed the trigger of his M-1 rifle while it was pointed at his foot.

I was there. I remember the D.I., red-faced with rage, yelling at the wounded man that shooting himself in the foot was about the stupidest thing a U.S. Marine could possibly do and he ought to be hung by his (expletives).

The image of the man crouched on the ground, bleeding and terrified, stayed with me all through the Korean War. I can still see the D.I.’s twisted face and hear his awful roar: “You don’t shoot your [expletive] self or your mother or your friends, you stupid [expletive]. You shoot the [expletive] enemy!”

This is a lesson I pass on today to police departments within the range of my words:

You don’t shoot your (expletive) self or your mother or your friends. You shoot the (expletive) enemy.

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The inability of police to fathom that simple rule is the reason FBI agents are crawling all over Southern California. They’re trying to determine in essence whether our cops know the difference between thugs threatening them with Uzis and old ladies waving doilies at them. One is dangerous, the other isn’t.

The U.S. Justice Department says there are about a dozen investigations going on simultaneously in seven Southern California counties, including L.A., that involve police shootings. Specifically, the feds want to know if anyone’s civil rights have been violated.

Riverside is being looked at the closest. A whole team is going to turn the city’s Police Department upside down to determine if there’s a pattern of violations going on. The investigation spins on the killing of Tyisha Miller, a 19-year-old African American shot to death by four Riverside police officers who thought she was reaching for a gun. The four cops were fired.

In L.A., the FBI is investigating the death of Margaret Mitchell, a frail, 54-year-old, mentally ill homeless woman who allegedly threatened two cops with a screwdriver. One of them killed her. She was also black.

What’s going on here? Is killing the only response to a threat by a woman with a screwdriver? Lt. David Hepburn, president of the L.A. Police Protective League, says yes, sometimes: “The person you’re dealing with dictates the reaction.”

Mike Dwyer, a retired cop who put in 25 years with the LAPD, sees it differently. “She should’ve been knocked down with a nightstick,” he says. “Cops are supposed to be able to handle a Margaret Mitchell without killing her.”

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No one has ever said that life on the street is easy. Interior decorators have it easy and haiku poets have it easy, but the life of a cop is rarely a walk in the park. Even parks can be dangerous.

It would seem logical, therefore, that departments would prepare their people to handle uneasy situations in a less violent, though not always easy, manner. The idea is to protect and serve, not shoot and kill.

Hepburn says the men and women of the LAPD are trained so well in terms of nonlethal response that “we’re the department other departments look to.”

Then why shoot a woman with nothing more lethal than a screwdriver?

“Anything can be a deadly weapon,” Hepburn replies. “A shard of glass or a stick can be deadly. It depends on the circumstance.”

The circumstance. “A woman’s got a screwdriver and I can’t handle it?” says Dwyer in a tone of incredulity. “Come on. . . .”

It all goes back to what the D.I. said. You shoot the enemy. Period. In war it’s pretty easy to identify the enemy. They wear different uniforms and talk funny. On the street, it’s not so easy, even though some of them wear baggy clothes and talk funny.

The idea must be conveyed to those who guard our nights that not everyone is the enemy. My D.I. would have probably put it this way:

“This is a [expletive] woman waving a [expletive] doily. This is a [expletive] thug with an Uzi in your face. One you shoot, one you don’t. Who knows the difference? Let’s see a [expletive] show of hands!”

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.