Tough calls at street level

Policing is one of the only fields in which the toughest decisions are made at the bottom. We saw that again this month with the tragic death of 19-month-old Suzie Marie Pena.

Sure, the Los Angeles Police Commission and the chief of police can -- and should -- carefully craft rules and policies that conform to the law and to our moral obligation to protect and to serve. But in the moment of truth, it is usually a police officer who has an instant to decide what to do.

No officers in the LAPD are more extensively prepared to make those split-second decisions than the officers of SWAT, whose training is continuous and comprehensive. Each platoon spends a minimum of three days a month studying and practicing such things as crisis negotiations, decision-making under stress, rescues, dynamic entries into buildings and on-the-move shooting.

In most cases, this training prepares them to make split-second decisions that save lives. In some cases, that saved life comes at the cost of an officer’s life.

On July 10, when Jose Raul Pena was holding his daughter hostage, a group of SWAT officers tried to slow the incident down and negotiate with him -- even though he had been shooting at them on and off for more than an hour and had threatened several times to take his own life and Suzie’s as well.

In the end, they put their lives in grave danger to rescue the girl, only to be met by Pena’s gunfire.

It is hard to parse such moments by examining dryly written policies. But it hardly needs to be said that no one was satisfied with the result.

Suzie’s death was a tragedy in which the officers themselves are now among the extended victims. But the fact is that what happened was dictated in large part by Pena.

The policies that the LAPD operates under, and especially those regarding deadly force, are some of the most carefully thought-out and restrictive in the nation. They far exceed what is required by law.

The department’s policy on the use of deadly force authorizes an officer to use such force when it “reasonably appears necessary” in order to protect himself or others from an immediate threat of death or serious injury, or to prevent a crime in which the suspect is placing others in jeopardy of death or serious injury, or to apprehend a suspect who is fleeing from a serious crime and there is a substantial risk that the suspect will cause death or serious injury if his or her capture is delayed.

There is no question that a well-defined policy on the use of deadly force can act as a guide for officers’ decision-making; if officers are to act confidently, those rules must be clear.

LAPD Chief William J. Bratton over the last two years has conducted a comprehensive review of the department’s use-of-force policy, training, equipment and tactics. We convened a conference of nationally recognized policing experts from across the country. A strategic planning work group has emerged at the chief’s direction, with a mandate to seek and adopt the “best practices” in policing. That effort is well underway, and a key component of the effort is to broaden community involvement and understanding in these processes.

But regardless of preparation, training and weapons, in the end it always comes down to the suspect’s actions. If Suzie had been killed by Pena, critics certainly would have said that we should have gone in sooner; as it is, critics will say we should have waited longer.

Police realize that they will be second-guessed, but no one second-guesses us more than ourselves. In the end, outside the Pena family, there are none more saddened by the death of that beautiful little girl than the officers who went into that room to try to save her. There is no policy that can change that.