SFC_E7
02-25-2003, 12:44 AM
When blood spills, officers left with lasting nightmares
By Susan Carroll and Senta Scarborough
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 27, 2003
Related links
• Graphic: Shot at: The civilians
• Graphic: Shooting: The officers
• Graphic: The shootings, shots fired
• Criminals shot typically are young, poor, impaired men
• Felon had vowed he would choose bullets over bars
• Suits vs. police face long odds
• Passenger's ride ended in flurry of police bullets
• Drunken driving continued until 'hell broke loose'
• Angry job-seeker returned, armed and dangerous
Lt. Robert Handy sees flashbacks of that rainy night at the oddest times, when he's lying in bed at night or on vacation with his family.
Sometimes he sees just a quick image, like a stray bullet striking a cinder-block wall. Other times he sees the most frightening reminder - the body of Gilbert Cantu, a man he killed.
After a daylong manhunt, the Phoenix police officer found Cantu running through an apartment complex. Cantu, 29, was suspected of having pulled a gun on his ex-girlfriend, and then on a stranger who refused to give him a cigarette.
Handy was chasing him with gun in hand when Cantu pulled out a .38-caliber revolver.
It was over within seconds. Cantu was lying facedown. Blood from two bullet holes was spreading across the back of his T-shirt.
"I was scared for my own safety at the time," Handy recalls, "but honestly I was scared that I'd shot somebody in the back, especially. That was terrifying for me, even though I know you can and there are circumstances when you should."
It's a situation most police officers say the public can't imagine. For them, a police shooting can be a form of career suicide. Those involved in "bad shootings" can face discipline, or in very rare cases, criminal charges. A poor decision, typically made in a split second, can leave a police department open to lawsuits, and officers in the lurch. Even in shootings that are clearly justified, many officers suffer psychological trauma or lasting physical injuries.
Officers' innocence lost
Nearly all of the Valley's police shootings have been ruled justified, both in peer reviews that examine an officer's adherence to department policy and in criminal reviews by prosecutors. Former Chandler police Officer Dan Lovelace is the only officer in state history to be charged criminally for killing someone in the line of duty. He shot a woman suspected of passing a forged prescription at a drugstore drive-through.
Despite the record, the sheer volume of shootings in the Valley has raised questions about officers' training and civilian safety.
Handy said the public has difficulty understanding the dynamics of a police shooting.
"I don't know that they ever could understand a lot of the things that police go through. It takes away your innocence and you'll never get it back," said Handy, now with 12 years on the force.
"They don't see the stressful side of it. They don't see the dreams in the middle of the night or the waking up in a cold sweat or the freezing on a call or some of the aftermaths of a shooting. I still hear sounds and see things from that night," he said. "It doesn't disturb me or anything like that. It doesn't make me nonfunctional. But they creep in."
Laurence Miller, a Florida-based police psychologist, said up to 50 percent of officers involved in shootings suffer from a time delay, see the shooting in slow motion and often second-guess their instincts, even if they were right.
"As much as they're trained, the actual shooting of a person is a traumatic event," Miller said. "Over a course of a few days, many start second-guessing. 'Maybe I should have tried to talk the guy down first.' "
The most serious trauma generally comes from a more ambiguous shooting, in which, for example, someone has a wallet that an officer mistook for a gun, Miller said. But even in the most clear-cut shootings, some kind of psychological aftermath is normal, he said.
"You don't want some kind of stone-cold psychopath," he said. "Most (officers) do recover and are able to function on the job."
From death's shadow
Tempe police Officer Scott Tipton never made it back on patrol.
On his 10th wedding anniversary, Tipton was lying on his back in a grocery store parking lot, his blood seeping onto the pavement.
The burly, then 32-year-old officer was shot six times. One bullet entered through his arm and exited his chest, missing his heart by millimeters. His lung had collapsed.
He looked up.
"I could see his shadow as it fell over me," Tipton recalls of the gunman's approach. "Wow. He is going to shoot me in the head and I am going to find out what it is like to die."
Vern Daniel Pleaugh, 27, was distraught that his ex-girlfriend was ending their seven-year relationship. He was taking it out on Tipton, who had responded to the 911 call from Pleaugh's girlfriend.
Tipton saw one way out, one chance, and took it.
When Pleaugh's gun jammed, Tipton rolled over and fired nine shots. Pleaugh would die within two days.
Tipton remembers thinking, "If I'm going to die, I've got to do something to stop him. If he is going to shoot me, then he will shoot other people, too," said Tipton, who took a medical retirement and is no longer a police officer.
Tipton, like the majority of officers involved in shootings, was relatively new to the force, with less than three years of experience. About 60 percent of all police shootings involve officers under the age of 36. More than 50 percent of the officers have fewer than seven years on the force.
But police say that does not mean younger cops with fewer years on the force are more prone to shootings. They simply work the latest shifts in rougher neighborhoods, where criminals are most likely to confront police, officers said.
Similarly, the median age for a beat cop has dropped steadily during the past decades, police say, to the early 20s for the midnight shift. That is due to the retirement of the baby-boomer generation of officers, a police consultant said.
"The majority of police officers on patrol in the United States now are young police officers," said Kevin Gilmartin, a law enforcement consultant. "Most departments are under serious pressure to hire, and they can't get the quality they want."
Questions always linger
Handy worked some of the toughest gang neighborhoods as a young beat cop. When he was promoted to sergeant, he told his wife he would be safer.
But then he found himself in that rainy parking lot.
Handy said the review process hung over his head for months after the shooting.
Within a month, he was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. The internal investigation, which took a year, found Cantu had pointed the gun at Handy.
The medical examiner backed up the police account, saying the bullets entered Cantu's body at an angle, indicating Cantu was reaching over his shoulder to shoot.
"Was that the right thing to do? Even after the autopsy report, you wonder that. It was him or me because he could have killed me," said Handy, a 34-year-old father of two girls. "I'd never looked down the barrel of a gun that close before."
Still, one fact sticks with Handy. Cantu had a child.
Three hours before the shooting, Cantu broke into his ex-girlfriend's apartment and was waiting when she got home. He pulled a gun while she was holding their 10-month-old baby. She got away and called police, but when they arrived, he was gone.
"That child's 6 years old now and never knew his dad," Handy said. "That's something I still think about, but it was his dad's choice - not mine."
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/special27/articles/0127shootings-officers.html
By Susan Carroll and Senta Scarborough
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 27, 2003
Related links
• Graphic: Shot at: The civilians
• Graphic: Shooting: The officers
• Graphic: The shootings, shots fired
• Criminals shot typically are young, poor, impaired men
• Felon had vowed he would choose bullets over bars
• Suits vs. police face long odds
• Passenger's ride ended in flurry of police bullets
• Drunken driving continued until 'hell broke loose'
• Angry job-seeker returned, armed and dangerous
Lt. Robert Handy sees flashbacks of that rainy night at the oddest times, when he's lying in bed at night or on vacation with his family.
Sometimes he sees just a quick image, like a stray bullet striking a cinder-block wall. Other times he sees the most frightening reminder - the body of Gilbert Cantu, a man he killed.
After a daylong manhunt, the Phoenix police officer found Cantu running through an apartment complex. Cantu, 29, was suspected of having pulled a gun on his ex-girlfriend, and then on a stranger who refused to give him a cigarette.
Handy was chasing him with gun in hand when Cantu pulled out a .38-caliber revolver.
It was over within seconds. Cantu was lying facedown. Blood from two bullet holes was spreading across the back of his T-shirt.
"I was scared for my own safety at the time," Handy recalls, "but honestly I was scared that I'd shot somebody in the back, especially. That was terrifying for me, even though I know you can and there are circumstances when you should."
It's a situation most police officers say the public can't imagine. For them, a police shooting can be a form of career suicide. Those involved in "bad shootings" can face discipline, or in very rare cases, criminal charges. A poor decision, typically made in a split second, can leave a police department open to lawsuits, and officers in the lurch. Even in shootings that are clearly justified, many officers suffer psychological trauma or lasting physical injuries.
Officers' innocence lost
Nearly all of the Valley's police shootings have been ruled justified, both in peer reviews that examine an officer's adherence to department policy and in criminal reviews by prosecutors. Former Chandler police Officer Dan Lovelace is the only officer in state history to be charged criminally for killing someone in the line of duty. He shot a woman suspected of passing a forged prescription at a drugstore drive-through.
Despite the record, the sheer volume of shootings in the Valley has raised questions about officers' training and civilian safety.
Handy said the public has difficulty understanding the dynamics of a police shooting.
"I don't know that they ever could understand a lot of the things that police go through. It takes away your innocence and you'll never get it back," said Handy, now with 12 years on the force.
"They don't see the stressful side of it. They don't see the dreams in the middle of the night or the waking up in a cold sweat or the freezing on a call or some of the aftermaths of a shooting. I still hear sounds and see things from that night," he said. "It doesn't disturb me or anything like that. It doesn't make me nonfunctional. But they creep in."
Laurence Miller, a Florida-based police psychologist, said up to 50 percent of officers involved in shootings suffer from a time delay, see the shooting in slow motion and often second-guess their instincts, even if they were right.
"As much as they're trained, the actual shooting of a person is a traumatic event," Miller said. "Over a course of a few days, many start second-guessing. 'Maybe I should have tried to talk the guy down first.' "
The most serious trauma generally comes from a more ambiguous shooting, in which, for example, someone has a wallet that an officer mistook for a gun, Miller said. But even in the most clear-cut shootings, some kind of psychological aftermath is normal, he said.
"You don't want some kind of stone-cold psychopath," he said. "Most (officers) do recover and are able to function on the job."
From death's shadow
Tempe police Officer Scott Tipton never made it back on patrol.
On his 10th wedding anniversary, Tipton was lying on his back in a grocery store parking lot, his blood seeping onto the pavement.
The burly, then 32-year-old officer was shot six times. One bullet entered through his arm and exited his chest, missing his heart by millimeters. His lung had collapsed.
He looked up.
"I could see his shadow as it fell over me," Tipton recalls of the gunman's approach. "Wow. He is going to shoot me in the head and I am going to find out what it is like to die."
Vern Daniel Pleaugh, 27, was distraught that his ex-girlfriend was ending their seven-year relationship. He was taking it out on Tipton, who had responded to the 911 call from Pleaugh's girlfriend.
Tipton saw one way out, one chance, and took it.
When Pleaugh's gun jammed, Tipton rolled over and fired nine shots. Pleaugh would die within two days.
Tipton remembers thinking, "If I'm going to die, I've got to do something to stop him. If he is going to shoot me, then he will shoot other people, too," said Tipton, who took a medical retirement and is no longer a police officer.
Tipton, like the majority of officers involved in shootings, was relatively new to the force, with less than three years of experience. About 60 percent of all police shootings involve officers under the age of 36. More than 50 percent of the officers have fewer than seven years on the force.
But police say that does not mean younger cops with fewer years on the force are more prone to shootings. They simply work the latest shifts in rougher neighborhoods, where criminals are most likely to confront police, officers said.
Similarly, the median age for a beat cop has dropped steadily during the past decades, police say, to the early 20s for the midnight shift. That is due to the retirement of the baby-boomer generation of officers, a police consultant said.
"The majority of police officers on patrol in the United States now are young police officers," said Kevin Gilmartin, a law enforcement consultant. "Most departments are under serious pressure to hire, and they can't get the quality they want."
Questions always linger
Handy worked some of the toughest gang neighborhoods as a young beat cop. When he was promoted to sergeant, he told his wife he would be safer.
But then he found himself in that rainy parking lot.
Handy said the review process hung over his head for months after the shooting.
Within a month, he was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. The internal investigation, which took a year, found Cantu had pointed the gun at Handy.
The medical examiner backed up the police account, saying the bullets entered Cantu's body at an angle, indicating Cantu was reaching over his shoulder to shoot.
"Was that the right thing to do? Even after the autopsy report, you wonder that. It was him or me because he could have killed me," said Handy, a 34-year-old father of two girls. "I'd never looked down the barrel of a gun that close before."
Still, one fact sticks with Handy. Cantu had a child.
Three hours before the shooting, Cantu broke into his ex-girlfriend's apartment and was waiting when she got home. He pulled a gun while she was holding their 10-month-old baby. She got away and called police, but when they arrived, he was gone.
"That child's 6 years old now and never knew his dad," Handy said. "That's something I still think about, but it was his dad's choice - not mine."
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/special27/articles/0127shootings-officers.html