When Detective David Williams shot and killed Matthew Andersen early this month, he became the 13th Fayetteville officer in the last 10 years to be involved in taking a life in the line of duty.
It took only a few days for the Fayetteville Police Department’s internal investigation to clear Williams, a 10-year veteran of the department. Nobody has suggested Williams acted in anything other than a professional way in confronting a bank robber who slammed his Honda Accord into an occupied bank customer’s car in an effort to escape.
But officer-involved shootings always raise questions that, to varying degrees, can and cannot be fully answered: Did he fire too quickly? Were there other, less-than-lethal options? Departmental policies used in reviewing officer-involved shootings are specifically drawn up to establish some standard against which officers’ actions can be measured.
In Fayetteville, officers have been involved in six fatal and one nonfatal shooting since 1999. The officers involved were cleared, both internally and externally, of any wrongdoing. Within Benton and Washington Counties, the Rogers Police Department has the next highest number of officer-involved shootings in the past decade, with three fatal and two nonfatal incidents.
For law enforcement officers and residents alike, the questions surrounding officer-involved shootings are similar: Were they avoidable?
“The only way you find out is by talking to the officers involved,” said David Klinger, a senior research scientist at the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C., who also teaches criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri at St. Louis.
“For some, it’s a deliberate choice they make,” Klinger said. “Others have no recollection of firing their weapon at all. In general, officers around the country show a remarkable amount of restraint in situations where they could have shot and didn’t.”
Fayetteville Police Sgt. Tracy Risley said the number of police-related shootings in a community can depend on a variety of factors including population and quality of life.
“This is a college town with mixed citizenship,” he said. “There are a lot of things that attract people to this area and along with that, you have a criminal aspect. There’s not a single person in uniform at this department who wants to go out and shoot someone, but we are sworn to protect and sometimes that involves shooting an individual to stop a threat.”
Rogers Police Sgt. Jonathan Best echoed Risley’s thoughts, adding a police department shouldn’t be judged based on the number of police-involved shootings.
“Police officers use the force necessary to de-escalate a situation,” he said. “An officer’s use of force is based on someone else’s actions.”
Sgt. Tony Monheim, a retired Miami-Dade County Police officer, has investigated numerous officer-involved shootings during his 30-year law enforcement career.
“Most people don’t understand what police work is like,” he said. “The notion that everyone out there is a ‘John Wayne’ who wants to be involved in a shootout isn’t true. I’ve been involved in three shootings and that’s last thing an officer wants to do. I think you have to walk in someone’s shoes to really know what they experience.”
Monheim now instructs homicide, robbery and officer-involved shooting seminars for the International Association of Chiefs of Police at the Southeast Florida Institute of Criminal Justice. Through his years of research, Monheim has compiled his own data to identify trends related to officer-involved shootings.
“When we talk about officer-involved shootings, the problem most people run into is that there’s no database that compiles how many people are killed by police,” he said. “We assume there are about 300 to 400 a year, but we really don’t know.”
Annually, he said, there are about 12 million contacts between police, suspects, witnesses and victims. Of those encounters, less than one-tenth of a percent result in officers using lethal force. The average police officer, he added, could go 250 years without being involved in a shooting.
In both Washington and Benton counties, officers must undergo routine firearms and simulated scenario training. But regardless of their training level, officers have little experience when it comes real-life encounters involving gunfire.
“In the heat of the moment, you’re going to revert back to your training,” said Fayetteville Police Chief Greg Tabor. “We try to make it as realistic as possible, as far as whether or not to shoot. Obviously, when you’re talking about live gunfire, it’s difficult to be really real.”
The Fayetteville Police Department’s use of force policy lists different levels of police power. The first two levels are police presence and verbal command, followed by hands-on force. Stun gun use and pepper spray fall into the next level of force, followed by batons or flashlights, which are often used to strike a suspect’s pressure points to gain control. The last level of police power includes lethal force.
“I think that when you read the blogs and the newspapers, it’s easy to sit back as the Monday morning quarterback,” Tabor said. “But when an officer is involved in a shooting, he doesn’t have three days to think about it. He has about three-tenths of a second to react.”
Though police must undergo mandatory critical incident debriefing after they shoot someone, the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder often continue to haunt them.
According to Klinger, officers experience different reactions after they shoot someone. Some feel distraught, angry, upset or guilty, he said, while others feel justified or even elated that they survived a life-threatening situation.
In addition to affecting police, officer related shootings have a ripple effect on those surrounding the incident, including the officer’s family, the victim’s family, the police department and the community.
“Obviously, it’s a horrible situation for everyone involved,” Tabor said. “I don’t think people realize how difficult it is until they know an officer personally who’s been involved in a shooting.”