Into the Kill Zone Read online

  I never really gave much thought to shootings before I came on the job, but I was raised to take care of myself, so I knew I’d do whatever I had to if it came to that. That came from my dad. He was a boxer, and he got me involved in it when I was seven. I grew up in a real tough part of town, and my dad always told me from day one, he said, “Don’t ever go looking for trouble, never. If you can, walk away from a fight, never look for trouble. But if someone is trying to hurt you or your family, you do whatever is necessary to take care of yourself and your family.” So I’ve always thought that if someone was trying to hurt me bad enough, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill them. I never really sat down before I got hired and thought about the issue of shooting someone. It was just engraved in the back of my mind that I would do whatever was necessary to take care of myself and my family, whether it be deadly force, or whatever.

  • • •

  I’d say I was about twelve years old when I first thought about becoming a cop. I think it was from watching TV and seeing LAPD out in my neighborhood doing their jobs. I grew up in a bad area, but the cops always treated me fairly. I had some positive contact with cops when I was growing up, and their job looked interesting, so from a young age I always felt like being a police officer was what I wanted to do. I think when I was twelve, the idea of getting into law enforcement was more of a fantasy, and then it grew into something more structured as I got older. By the middle to the end of high school, I decided that I really wanted to become a policeman.

  I knew I couldn’t be a cop until I was twenty-one, so about two or three days after high school graduation, I joined the Marine Corps. I stayed in the Marine Corps until right before I got on the department. In the marines, I worked the Presidential Honor Guard and security detail for President Carter. We were stationed in Washington, D.C., at Marine Barracks 8th and I, which is the oldest post in the Marine Corps. That’s where they do all the ceremonial stuff. Then I worked the White House and also Camp David. So I worked different security assignments.

  We carried loaded weapons and we got training on the rules of engagement, but I didn’t think I’d ever have to fire on anyone. I knew that I was there more for show and that if I ended up in a shooting situation, the Secret Service would be putting holes in the guy before I got any rounds off. I mean, we weren’t the primary defense for the president. Like I said, my position was more for show.

  The only time we would be primary is in the case of a nuclear or terrorist attack. In that case, our actual primary duty was security for the president. For instance, if the president had to be evacuated, we’d land, secure the perimeter, the president would come in with the Secret Service, some of us would go to the bunkers with the president, and when he came out we would be his security force because the Secret Service wouldn’t be big enough to handle that. We trained for stuff like that, but I didn’t think it was ever really going to happen.

  I think the first time I gave any serious thought to the possibility of getting in a shooting was right before I went into the academy. I had applied to the police department when I was still in the marines, done all the testing, cleared the background and all that, so I went almost straight from the marines to the PD. Just before I entered the academy, an officer from a neighboring department was shot and killed. He was a young guy just out of the military and still in training when it happened, so I identified with him. That got me thinking about shootings and the possibility of shooting someone. But up to that time, I never really thought about shootings. I knew that officers got into shootings, but I’d never really thought about me personally getting in a shooting. Up till then, my focus had been on working hard to get on the job.

  • • •

  I’ve always been pretty sure I was going to do something either military or police related since I was a little kid. I’m not sure why. I guess the activity, the excitement. There has also always been the feeling within me that there are bad people, evil people, out there doing harm and killing people and that they need to be stopped. I have been around firearms all my life, started shooting competitive shotguns at a young age, so I’ve been an expert shooter since childhood. I’ve always felt that maybe that talent made me somewhat responsible to stop the bad people, that maybe I needed to be a sheriff or a policeman or something because that was one thing that I was good at. My parents taught me the difference in right and wrong, and since I can protect people with my area of expertise, I felt that maybe I should.

  I read a lot as a kid. I read a lot of everything, from cowboy books, to quite a few police books, to a lot of spy novels. I knew from all this reading and from watching occasional news pieces that there were some seriously bad, evil people out there and that there was a potential that I would come into contact with them. I knew that I would be able to handle it. I never questioned my ability to take somebody’s life if it was a situation of where it was them or me, or them or my family, or them or some innocent person they were trying to victimize. So I always felt that I would be able to shoot somebody if it was necessary.

  • • •

  I wanted to be a police officer from when I was in junior high, or even before then. I remember watching Adam 12 and just being fascinated with the idea of being a police officer. I think it was the responsibility of it, the pride involved, getting to work with people and to help people in need. I was also drawn to the excitement. I liked the idea of not knowing what’s gonna happen when you go to work, of having to think on your feet and react. Also, I looked up to police officers, and I hoped that people would look up to me and that I’d be a positive example to people when I became a cop.

  I don’t recall ever thinking about shootings when I was young, but I did think about physical confrontations. The possibility of that. I worked on preparing myself physically and staying in shape. I remember that even at a very young age I’d go out and run for a certain length of time, then do pull-ups and push-ups. I’ve always been pretty small—thin boned and things like that—so I was working on my strength and building myself physically for the job from a young age.

  Then I became a Christian when I was in high school, and I had a period of time in my mind where I felt that my calling in life was to be a church planter. I got a B.A. in philosophy and then started seminary. I planned to get a graduate degree in theology and go plant churches over in Australia among the Aborigines, or somewhere else in some Third World country, and I guess—had things kept going the way they were—that’s what I would have done. But I had to support myself and seminary was very difficult. I couldn’t handle classes and a full-time job because I worked more on school in that one semester in seminary than I did my entire four years of college before that. It was tough. I realized I couldn’t do that and work at the same time, so I decided to fall back on the thing that I loved as a child—law enforcement. I said, “I’ll give it a try.” Never looked back since.

  I thought quite a bit about the issue of killing people after I became a Christian. I remember that there were times during high school and college that I felt that I could never shoot anybody. Then, at some point, I realized, “Hey, if you gotta do it, you could do it.” I wouldn’t want to do it, but if I had to, I believed that I could. I think I just realized as I matured that life is not perfect, and we all have to react to things that life brings to us. Whether I was a cop, or I was just a citizen in my house and someone came in there to assault my family, I would do whatever was necessary to protect my family. I realized that protecting my family is the same thing that a cop does. He doesn’t just protect himself, he’s protecting the citizens. So I felt that I could do it.

  • • •

  I first got interested in law enforcement during my junior year in high school when I was called into the counseling office. At first, I thought I was in some kind of trouble, but when I got to the office, the counselor asked me what I was going to do when I got out of high school. I hadn’t given it any thought. I knew my parents wanted me to go to college, but as far as career choice I had
no idea. When I told the counselor that, he handed me this big pamphlet about a program called the Regional Occupational Program that allowed high school students to get credit for taking occupational classes and working at these different places. He told me to look the pamphlet over to see if there was anything that interested me.

  As I looked through it, the only jobs that interested me were things that would get me out of the building. I didn’t want to be cooped up. I was a very active kid who lost interest quickly. In school, I found myself daydreaming, my mind wandering, stuff like that. So I didn’t want a job where I’d have to be inside. Then I saw that there was this class on law enforcement/private security, and out of curiosity I decided to check it out. The class really piqued my interest because I learned that law enforcement was something that would get me outside a lot. So I thought, “Hey, that looks pretty good.” It really interested me, and that’s basically how I decided to get into law enforcement.

  As I was contemplating a career in police work, I kind of asked myself about whether I thought I could shoot somebody. My dad had been a marine pilot in both World War II and Korea, so the issue of killing people wasn’t foreign to me. He had also raised me to have a self-protection kind of mind-set. He taught me what to do if we had an intruder enter the home, stuff like that. I took it from there and decided that I could shoot somebody. So from an early age, I thought I could shoot if I had to.

  Changing Jobs

  Some officers become interested in policing later in life. In this section, we meet several officers who came into police work when they decided that a career change was in order, and we hear how they approached the prospect of having to shoot someone.

  • • •

  I got into law enforcement in my early twenties. I was working in the communications unit of a hospital’s helicopter ambulance program, doing some PR and marketing coordination as well as managing calls. I was getting tired of that job, so I went down to the city hall to see what types of jobs they had to offer. I signed up for a bunch of things: communications dispatcher, lifeguard, some other stuff, and police officer. The police department called me up, I started going through the process, and it just snowballed from there.

  I didn’t really know what the job entailed, but as I went through the hiring process, it looked more and more interesting. The pay and fringe benefits looked good, but the things that appealed to me most were being able to work outdoors and being able to come into work wearing things like sweats and change into something. I know it sounds funny, but I’m a fairly laid-back, casual type of person and that really appealed to me.

  Prior to getting hired, I never really thought about shootings. We had guns around the house when I was growing up. My father liked to hunt, but I didn’t like it at all. He’d make me go sometimes, but I didn’t care for it, so I was never big on guns. Now I did have a handgun when I got older, but it was just for target shooting. I’d shoot at an indoor range maybe once or twice a year. That was it. I didn’t carry it around or even have it loaded at the house. I just had it for occasional target practice. The only time I can remember giving any thought to the notion of shooting someone was during the captain’s interview, one of the final things in the hiring process. The guy asked me about how I would feel if I had to take a life; would I be able to do it? I obviously told him I could do it, because I knew that was what he wanted to hear. I mean, anyone would know that that’s the right answer if you want to be a cop.

  • • •

  I got introduced to law enforcement–type work while I was in college. I was pursuing a broadcasting degree, wanted to get into some type of broadcasting or journalism. I took a part-time job as a security guard to get some extra money and I really enjoyed it. I got burned out on college, got tired of being poor, so I dropped out for a while to work full-time. I had grown up in a small rural area, so I decided to move to the big city, see what kind of job I could find. I had a friend that was going to college here, so I stayed with him for a few days. As I was looking around, I saw this big billboard that said, “Join the Police Department.” I automatically correlated it with my security guard work and thought, “Hey, I know some guys who are cops. I could do that.” So I decided to give it a try, thinking I’d do it for a couple of years maybe, then go back to college and finish my broadcasting degree. But I fell in love with the job, and I’m still here twenty years later.

  Before I came on the job, I thought big-city cops got into shootings all the time. I fully expected to come here and get involved in a shooting before too long. I also thought that maybe I’d be shot. That crossed my mind a lot. I’d say the biggest thing that got me thinking that way was cop shows on TV. Those guys were in shootings every episode. Another thing was some stuff the guy I was staying with said. He tried to talk me out of joining. He told me that cops get killed here all the time. I remember thinking that maybe I ought to rethink this police job stuff, and then I thought it can’t really be that dangerous. But I still thought that maybe I’d get shot. Then, after a little while on the streets, I came to understand that shootings don’t happen very often. I never went back to college, and after twenty years I still haven’t been shot.

  • • •

  I was in the military, United States Army, assigned to a specialized recon platoon in an airborne unit. Then I got hurt and couldn’t do that anymore. I knew that I wanted to do something with a paramilitary organization because I enjoyed that environment, so I thought about law enforcement. When I got out, the first thing I did was put in for police jobs. I applied to three departments—two sheriff’s departments and the city PD. I got hired by all three on the same day but decided to go with the city. One of the county agencies told me, “You have to work the jail five years minimum.” The other told me, “Probably five years in the jail.” But the city said, “You’ll be on the street right away.” So I said, “That’s where I’m going.”

  I had reconciled myself to the possibility that I might have to kill somebody even before I got into the military. When I decided to join up, I knew that there was always a possibility of war or skirmishes, police actions, and stuff like that. I knew that I could be involved in a shooting. I thought about it: “Would I be able to do it?” I made my mind up that if I was going to do that type of work that I was going to be able to do it. I’m a survivor, and the decision I made before the military just carried over to police work.

  • • •

  I first started thinking about becoming a cop probably just a couple years before I came on the department. Part of it was that my husband applied for the department, and I kept being told that I had a better chance than he did. People told us that he was too white, too male, and since I’m American Indian, I’d have a better chance of getting on. The other part of it was that I’d always been interested in law enforcement, the legal aspect of it, the investigative part of it. My father’s a lawyer, and I always liked the law. I was fascinated with it. I thought a long time ago about maybe being a lawyer but didn’t really like lawyers too much so decided, no, that wasn’t what I wanted to do. But I never thought I’d go into law enforcement. Never really even considered it. Then, when I kept being told that I’d have a better chance to get hired than my husband, it just sort of made me think, “Well, OK. I’m in for a career change anyway. So why not?”

  I was in my late thirties, working at a medical office when I decided to apply to the police department. It took about a year from when I applied till they hired me. During that year, I was scared to death about whether I could get through the academy because of my age. I had always been athletic, but I’d had a kid, and I had never been the type to run or do all the physical things that you hear about in the academy. I never really thought about the possibility of shootings. My main concern was just getting through all the testing and all the interviews and getting ready for the physical part of the academy.

  • • •

  I joined the Marine Corps on my seventeenth birthday, and I had planned on making it a c
areer. When I had about ten years in, I was teaching a rappel class for a regional SWAT academy that was using the Marine Corps rappel tower. Everybody was telling their war stories; we had our war stories and they had their war stories, so it wasn’t like it was that big of a deal. Then they started talking about working ten hours a day, four days a week, and anything over ten hours is time and a half. That got me thinking because I worked thirty days a month, twenty-four hours a day, and always got paid the same. When they talked about making $40,000 or more a year, I said, “I’m in the wrong profession.” So about four months before my commitment was up, I applied to several law enforcement agencies and had a job waiting for me when I got out of the corps.

  Before I became a cop, I never really thought about shootings because I was with the pretty active unit in the Marine Corps, and my primary MOS was all combat-related stuff. We practiced and trained a lot. Did close-quarter combat training, did hand to hand; we did all kinds of stuff that dealt with more violence than what I thought the police were dealing with. I just thought it would be a good career because you can promote, make a good income, you don’t really have to worry about layoffs, issues like that. There were other issues too, like being in a profession where I could make a difference. But I thought it would definitely be an easy transition from the military to law enforcement.