Officer Involved

I used to think the easiest thing

to do was to make a deadly force decision.

He tries to kill me, so I kill him, or I shoot him.

It's not that simple.

There were two times in my career

I almost shot a fellow officer.

I'm just lucky that things went down the way they did

or I'd have to be living with that.

- Twice I pulled guns on people and had them

tell me to just basically go to hell.

So what do you do?

You're standing there holding a gun and this guy's

coming at you, what do you do?

And not all decisions are easy.

You're looking at making a judgement that other people

have hours, if not days or weeks, to decide on.

And you have to do it when you're literally scared

out of your wits.

You're caught completely off guard.

My name is Patrick.

I'm a husband, a son,

a former academic,

and a pretty deep thinker.

And for the last two years,

I've been on a mission to understand what happens

in the wake of an officer-involved shooting.

While traditional narratives have tended to focus on the

devastation and the confusion wrought by the bullets fired,

little attention has been placed on the experience

of the police officer who pulled the trigger

and the chain reaction of events that follows.

This film began in 2013 with the simple question,

and brought both my wife and I across the country,

digging a tunnel to the heart of the question:

What happens to an officer after a shooting?

- Keep your hands in the air and come toward me!

When this project began,

we didn't know where we'd go or how far we'd travel,

but as we got further down the road

and met with dozens and dozens of people, we realized

that the men and women who are involved have a lot to say.

As a police officer myself, I stood ready to listen.

The following is a look, if only a glimpse,

into what it's like to be an officer involved.

Did you ever think that you would be involved in a shooting?

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

You heard the stories of your instructors and older officers

who said, "I've been a police officer for this long,

"and I've never shot anybody."

I never thought I'd actually be in one,

but I almost had the idea that I wanted to.

And I know most people would never understand that.

Most police officers will, but other people won't.

You get in this job to really test yourself,

physically, mentally, emotionally.

You think about it.

I honestly didn't think it would happen,

especially this soon in my career.

I was employed full time approximately, say, eight months.

And this incident occurred.

But wholeheartedly, did I actually think

that that was ever gonna happen to me?

No.

I never thought I'd be put in that situation.

I was aware it could happen.

- Most officers don't walk out looking for a gunfight.

In fact, I don't know any officer that does.

Or use of force situation.

They walk up in a situation

and for the most part are caught by surprise.

Or they try to control something,

and it goes sideways on them.

- People don't realize that about being a cop.

99% of the time it's just mundane stuff.

Doing a job, helping people.

Doing traffic, things like that.

But when all hell breaks loose,

there's nothing in the world like it.

And it always is remarkable to me that our men and women

in law enforcement can stand up to that.

- The other thing they don't realize is that we're human

beings, that we have fear,

we bleed just like anybody else.

We're not supermen.

Bullets don't bounce off of us.

- Who would want to be a police officer?

- People who wanna help take care of the innocents.

People need protection.

People are not warriors.

They go to work every day, I mean theoretically.

They have families.

But they don't understand they may fall prey

to the worst people there are.

They used to beat the living daylights out of me.

I was a child of the 60s.

I had hair down to my waist, and I was a pot smoker

and somewhat left of center.

And my perception of police officers was not protective.

It was fearful because I saw them as fascists at the time.

But once I started to see them as humans and see their

vulnerability, I knew that this was what I belonged doing.

I saw their humanity.

- Did you always want to be a police officer?

No.

First I wanted to be a chef.

Then I decided, there's always been a little part

of me that wanted to be a policeman.

And the chef thing, I figured if I was a chef,

I like to eat too much, so I'd weigh 400 pounds.

Yes.

Yep.

My interactions with law enforcement as a kid,

and on up into the teenage years was,

it was always positive.

That was kind of my guiding light,

as far as what I thought I wanted to do.

And then it just kind of, I never lost focus of that.

Not at all. (chuckles)

My dad was a cop, and I went to college

and was gonna go to graduate school and just didn't really

wanna know what I wanted to do.

I would never pick this profession.

It kinda picked me.

It was a career change.

Aside from the corny answer of, "I wanted to help people,"

which is always part of it, there was a practical aspect.

I needed to get a real job.

- Policing is the only occupation I can think of where we

take the employee and we send them out to do their job.

They get out there.

They do what they are expected to do, what in fact,

they've been ordered to do

which, in fact, they would even be derelict in their duty

to not do it, which is to protect themselves and the public.

They use the equipment that we gave them,

they use the training that we've provided to them.

They do it under the threat of life and death stress.

They do it very well, and then when the whole thing is all

over with, they are now going to be a de facto suspect

in a felony crime.

Where they will be investigated criminally to find out

if they're gonna be indicted on a felony crime.

They will also, typically, undergo an automatic Internal

Affairs investigation to find out if they're going to be

disciplined and or terminated, all for doing their job,

and in fact, risking their life doing it.

When you think about it,

that's a very bizarre position to put an employee in.

- After the shooting, what happened next with you?

See, I'm not a smoker.

I grabbed a cigarette, and I started smoking.

I don't know why I did that.

It's probably the only cigarette I've ever smoked.

I was kind of angry with him

for forcing me to do something like that, you know.

I didn't wanna do it.

- I remember, I walked down away from the house,

and I let out a scream.

And I believe that's the time

when I said "63," into the radio.

63, radio, 63!

- I copy 63. - Shots fired, 63.

- It's kinda like you see your life flash before your eyes,

and you wonder.

I don't know, I didn't think about it now, but now I think

about what would have happened if I'd died that day.

- Well, I look back around the wall and I see him outside

the wall shooting down the wall at me.

And I think, "Son of a gun, he didn't go.

"His chance to escape was there, and he didn't take it."

He no longer was forcing me in a confrontation

that he wants to get away, and I'm supposed to catch him,

now he's trying to kill me.

- But all I remember is walking up to him afterwards,

and thinking, "I'm glad I got you.

"I mean it was either me or you, and I'm glad it's you."

You can tell, it's 25 years later, man.

I'm still emotional about it, it still bothers me.

- The aftermath of the shooting is an extremely demanding

and stressful time.

In my opinion, once the gun smoke has cleared,

the officer's full-time job, and this'll vary,

from person to person, and situation to situation,

their full-time job needs to be coping with the aftermath

and all the many challenges that they're gonna be facing.

- What was it like, to tell your family?

I called my parents.

My dad was alive at the time, and my mom answered the phone.

I said, "Hey lemme talk to Daddy."

She says, "Is everything okay?"

I say, "Everything's fine."

So I talk to my dad,

I said, "Hey."

He said, "What's wrong?"

I said, "Well, I just had to shoot somebody."

He said, "What in the hell?"

I said, "Well, he shot at me first.

"He missed, and I shot back, and I didn't miss."

And he said, "Fuck the son of a bitch!"