It’s Hard to Believe Fatal Shooting Was Inevitable

I think we all know that unless the initial reports change dramatically in detail, no charges will be filed against the two Huntington Beach police officers who shot and killed a 19-year-old woman Aug. 25 for allegedly brandishing a knife.

Nor does it carry much weight to sit on the sidelines and say how you would have handled the situation. Ninety-nine percent of us haven’t had anyone come at us with a knife and likely never will. I’m guessing it looks one way in your mind’s eye and a whole lot different in real life in real time.

But as intuitive human beings, how can we not have a gut feeling that with at least three officers on the scene, someone, somehow could have subdued the woman short of firing lethal shots into her chest?

Initial reports indicated that while a third officer was loading nonlethal rubber pellets into his gun, the woman lunged and the other two cops shot her. Initial reports also indicate that the officers repeatedly ordered her to drop the knife. For some reason, neither the spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department nor the Huntington Beach police said Friday afternoon they knew what kind of knife it was, although the incident had occurred seven days before.

On paper, the officers’ actions sound like they were by the book. There’s not a law enforcement agency in the country that doesn’t permit its officers to shoot if they feel threatened. And for the most part, they’re the ones who decide if they feel threatened. That’s why charging an officer in these kinds of situations is as rare as someone driving the speed limit on the freeway.

In this case, I’m picturing the riot shields that departments have. I’m picturing a Taser. I’m picturing exactly what the third cop apparently was doing: loading up rubber pellets.

In the real world, though, those items aren’t readily available in all patrol cars. Most of the time, they aren’t needed on a shift.

But then a case like this comes along, and it’s just hard to believe that a young woman had to die because of whatever mental misery she was experiencing.

Should every street cop have “less than lethal” equipment when he or she hits the mean streets?

Huntington Beach Police Capt. Chuck Thomas says the department has decided each cop does not. Its policy, Thomas says, is that at the start of each shift, a supervisor makes sure that “an adequate number of those less-than-lethal devices are out there.” The department feels that the equipment will be better maintained if it’s checked out daily, as opposed to having it remain in individual squad cars, Thomas says.

That wouldn’t preclude each squad car having such equipment, but Thomas says there hasn’t been any particular in-house demand for it.

My guess is that some officers just don’t feel comfortable with that kind of equipment, believing that if they get into potentially life-threatening situations, they’d rather not take their chances.

I understand that, to a point. But as this case demonstrated, the officer loading the rubber pellets obviously thought a nonlethal shot might work. It’s troubling to think this woman’s life might have been spared had the officers who fired the shots had more immediate access to rubber pellets.

I asked Thomas if he thought it was “automatically obvious” that a less-than-lethal weapon would have worked in this case. He said he wouldn’t say that, because it would depend on such things as how close she was, how she was displaying the knife, what her demeanor was and how quickly her final actions occurred. For example, he said, it’s not known for sure if two Taser darts could have been fired in time if she made a quick move and was right on top of the officers.

All those details, we hope, will come out in the final report being prepared by Sheriff’s Department homicide investigators. They’ll send their findings to the district attorney for possible charges.

Won’t happen, so we’re left with the what-ifs.

What if at least one of the two officers who fired had less-than-lethal force available?

Cops generally think we don’t understand their jobs. I think we do. We know you can’t stop the clock as an incident is unfolding. We know you can’t orchestrate the actions of the threat in front of you. We know that when it comes down to you in mortal danger and a criminal suspect, you have no obligation to put yourself on the line.

We know they didn’t want to shoot a 19-year-old woman.

So my head says the cops probably played this one by the book.

My gut, though, tells me it was a death that didn’t need to happen.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.