Epilogue

However their shootings affected them, the eighty men and women I interviewed have pressed on with their lives. Many of them still worked the same assignments they held when we spoke, some have been promoted or otherwise moved on to different jobs with their departments, some have taken positions with other law enforcement agencies, and several have left police work entirely.

Among these officers, one resigned to start a small business, one quit to train horses, one went back to graduate school after retiring with twenty years of police service, one was forced to retire due to injuries he suffered during a scuffle with a resisting suspect, and one received a disability pension from the injuries he sustained in the incident described in the Officer Down section of the fourth chapter.

Several of the officers who stayed in law enforcement have been in additional shootings since the time they sat for interviews. These include a pair of patrol officers who each killed gunmen in separate early-morning shoot-outs, another patrol officer who killed a young man who was holding his girlfriend hostage, three SWAT officers who shot armed murder suspects who were trying to evade capture, a SWAT sniper who killed a suspect who pointed a gun at his teammates, and a SWAT officer who shot two people in separate incidents during the summer of 2001.

Finally, and tragically, one of the officers I interviewed did not survive a return visit to the kill zone. He was murdered late one February evening in 2001 when he caught up with a thief he’d been chasing through one of the housing projects that dot his inner-city patrol beat. In the bland parlance that is often used by both the press and the police to describe knock-down-drag-out fights between cops and crooks, “a struggle ensued,” and the thief somehow managed to wrest the officer’s gun from his holster, place the barrel against his forehead, and pull the trigger. This brave officer was thirty-seven when he was murdered. His youngest child was just seven weeks old.

• • •

I have lived with the kill zone for a quarter century now: contemplating the possibility that I might have to shoot someone prior to joining the LAPD, preparing for this prospect during my academy and field training, taking a life while I was still wet behind the ears, living with the consequences, holding my fire during numerous close calls, grieving the loss of friends and colleagues who were gunned down, studying how other officers deal with their time in the kill zone, and teaching both college students and police officers around the country about the role that deadly force plays in our society and how using it affects the men and women who pull the trigger. As I reflect back on all this experience, two things stand out in my mind—one social, the other personal.

On the social front, I believe that the profound effect that shooting someone can have on officers reflects the deep ambivalence that our freedom-loving society has about granting representatives of the state the power over life and death. We demand protection from the criminals and others in our society who might harm us, so we’ve given the police the power to use lethal force on our behalf. But we also fear for our freedoms, so we want our men and women in blue to use the awesome power they possess judiciously, perhaps even grudgingly.

Thus, in some ways, it’s comforting to know that officers often have some difficulty in the wake of shootings. Their pain and reflection show us that our police are cut from the same cloth as we are, that they share our values, that they do not take lightly the power we’ve given them. And this assures us, at some deep level, that the men and women we empower to protect us are not likely to turn against us.

On the personal front, I am struck by the honor of the men and women who willingly go into harm’s way every day to protect the rest of us. By and large, they understand the social compact that binds us; they understand that the awesome power they hold is not to be taken lightly; they understand that we expect them to be restrained. And so they are, even when—as the stories in the third chapter indicate—it exposes them and fellow officers to considerable danger.

But officers also understand that there are times when they must exercise their ultimate power on our behalf. And when they believe they must, they do so, despite the fact that they know they will be criticized and second-guessed; that they may be sued or even prosecuted; and that there is a good chance their hearts, minds, or souls will suffer for what they have done.

And so I tip my hat to all the good cops throughout our nation who risk their lives and strive to do the right thing when facing split-second decisions about life and death every day in the kill zone.