The Shooting
Donavan leisurely crossed the church picnic, having just thrown his empty paper plate into the trash. “Hey, Don,” Carl called out, and he changed direction to three men sitting around a picnic table.
Without pleasantries, Carl blurted, “You’re a cop. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” expecting the three wanted some free legal advice.
Carl continued, “We were discussing the shooting last week. The cops shot that boy 60 times, and we are trying to understand what happened. John said it was cops being cops, and Marvin's stance was the boy deserved it.”
Donavan sat down next to Carl with his face stern. “No one deserves to be shot by the police.”
Marvin's face showed embarrassment as he clarified his position, “I meant that actions have consequences. The boy already shot four people, killing one of them.”
“The boy has a name, Kevin Albright,” he stated clearly, staring down his three brothers in the Church. “He lived in my neighborhood. I know his father.” The three looked shocked at first, and then humbled themselves. “So, What’s your question?”
Carl paused to gather the question clearly in his mind, and then asked, “Why did the police shoot him 60 times”
“They didn’t shoot him sixty times. Eight shots hit the young man. Three of them were fatal.”
John spoke up, “60 shots seem excessive.”
“How many times should they have shot at him?” Donavan asked with a straight face.
“I don’t know.” John shook his head. “But 60 is overkill, isn’t it? He didn’t have a chance.”
“It’s better to overkill than to underkill. Keven was a confused young man with a mottled mind, and had already shot four people, killing the girl who broke up with him. How much of a chance should they have given him? He was reloading a new magazine when the police fired at him. Should they have given him a chance to kill one more?”
John understood the point but said, “60 shots sounds so,” and he paused for the right word.
Donavan jumped in, “Scary!” The three men nodded at the description.
John asked humbly, “You said only eight shots hit the young man. I saw a video of a man stating they should only need ten shots. He made a video of himself shooting a target and hitting it all ten times.”
“I saw one also,” Donavan answered. “The man sent the target 30 feet downrange. Stood there for a moment, and then took a deep breath to calm himself, deliberately pulled his weapon from his holster, and fired ten times downrange.”
“That sounds like the one I saw. The man said it should have taken only two shots to kill a person.” John nodded in agreement.
“I don’t remember seeing the target shooting back at him. It’s easy to shoot at a harmless target, but shooting a man trying to kill you is completely different. Imagine one day you are out on patrol, and a call comes in that there is a shooting. With lights and siren blaring, you race across town, blowing through red lights, trying to avoid accidents. Halfway to the call, you hear an officer down because he was shot. You pull up to the scene, and a young man is emptying his gun at you. You and five other officers have a chance to end the carnage but only have two seconds while he reloads his gun. Would you be able to stop the young man with two shots?”
The men looked stunned by the scenario, but Donavan continued, “In the time it took the target to stop moving, while he took a deep breath to calm himself, and he casually pulled his gun, that young man would have reloaded and shot that man in the video.”
John gulped and mumbled, “I never thought of it that way before.”
“The problem is people watch TV shows where the hero remains perfectly calm while chaos clamors around him. The hero makes one perfect shot through a crowd, killing the clearly bad guy before he harms anyone. We like when very complicated problems fit neatly into a little box we understand. We avoid empathy and understanding by not thinking hard to see all the underlying issues with a situation like what happened last week.”
Marvin asked, “Do you think the police did good by shooting Kevin?”
“There is no good in shooting anyone. The police involved that day had two bad choices. Shoot the troubled young man or let him go.”
John looked worried. “Why didn’t they let him go and catch him later?”
“Kevin had two more magazines full of ten rounds each. Do you think he would have stopped his killing spree because the cops were kind enough to let him go?”
Even Marvin shook his head no. “The five men and one woman chose the lesser of two wrongs.”
John stared at the table and quietly said, “The cops didn’t have much of a choice, did they?”
“It’s the boy’s fault this happened,” Carl added.
“Kevin was a troubled young man of 17. His mental health issues go back a couple of years. His psychiatrist didn’t think he was unsafe to be in public. His family worked tirelessly trying to get him help. There is another view not fitting into the neat little box.”
Carl started praying to God out loud and clear for all the men at the table to hear. He wanted a heart to love those he couldn’t understand. He wanted clarity to the humanity in everyone involved with the shooting. He mostly prayed for healing for those still alive, dealing with the repercussions of this awful event.
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