Situation: You’re the chief of a small West Virginia police department. A police officer under your command, responding to a domestic dispute call, is confronted by an armed man who behaves belligerently and demands that the officer shoot him. Perceiving it to be a case of attempted suicide by cop, the officer attempts to de-escalate the situation.
Two more officers appear on the scene. The distraught suicide wannabe approaches them, waving his gun, and one of them shoots him in the back of the head and kills him.
Question: Which officer do you fire?
Wow . . . unfortunate.
The cop’s reaction, was probably OK based on his prior experience and observation at the time. The other two cops reacted to what they saw based on their very brief exposure to the situation. As pointed out, it looks like everybody did the right thing based on the situation at that final instant.
Unfortunately, the chief may have considered that the other officers in his department might not trust the now-fired officer, thus compromising performance in future stressful instances.
Too bad all around. Hope the guy finds employment with a more understanding department, but I’ll not be surprised if he doesn’t. No good turn goes unpunished.
Reading between the lines I’m thinking there’s a lot more to this story than meets the eye. Police officers everywhere don’t get fired unless there’s a heck of a lot of cause.
In some cities in AZ police officers get fired for not shooting the mentally ill that are having a melt down. They do not get fired for killing unarmed people that are having mental issues. All they have to do to claim justification is say “I was scared.”
If the guy was approaching the two officers, how did he get shot in the back of the head? Fire the two officers for dishonesty about shooting the guy from behind. Suggest to the first officer he might need to pass information along to arriving officers next time.