for officers and private citizens alike
the standard of the use of deadly force
is objective reasonable evidence of a
deadly threat
[Applause]
[Music]
hi everybody welcome to today's bonus
badge cam lesson here at active self
protection i'm your host john korea
today's video comes to us from modesto
california
officers are on the lookout here for a
guy who his
sister has called in 911 because her
brother has been sending her text
messages that he just bought a gun
and that they need to watch out for to
see what happens next and this guy has
been in an
officer safety bulletin and so officers
recognized him because he has made
threats
to officers he said he you know the only
good cop is a dead cop and all he wants
for christmas is another dead orlando
police officer
and so officers have been called in this
area they've been looking out around
this church for this guy and the officer
here whose badge cam we are watching
is looking around and is going to see
him kind of over his right shoulder
as he comes around through here so you
can see him looking over to his left
he's actually here in a little while
going to see this guy duck in between
buildings
on the right and a confrontation is
going to ensue
that's what he's been told that's what
he has to see let's listen in on the
camera
[Music]
show me your hands
i'm beyond the park show me around put
your hands up i'm uh behind the uh
uh church west side of complex show me
your hands
put your hands up
[Music]
zebra five i'm facing southbound west
side of the park
show me your hands turn them out
if you go read the news stories that
i've linked in the descriptions i've
sped this up simply for the sake of time
uh the officer's shots proved fatal to
this man
officers did not find a gun on scene or
on the person of this man this is the
officer's
fifth officer involved shooting the
fourth fatally it is still under
investigation
we're going to talk about this one a lot
and that is where the lessons from
today's video ends
serious stuff out of this one and i
really think this is a really bad
outcome and so we're going to talk about
it from that perspective for all my
officers viewing i want you to know
i respect you and the work that you do
and i think that your job is very
difficult
and that said we have to hold ourselves
to a very high standard
so let's talk about what went wrong here
i want to start here by talking about
two things from the private citizens
perspective the family is incredibly
angry
over what has happened here but i want
us all as private citizens to recognize
when we call 9-1-1
when we call police we are asking the
state to come
and threaten violence on our behalf and
so if you don't want to have that threat
of violence
don't call the cops very particularly
and especially
when you're talking about vague threats
and those kinds of things handle your
business yourself do your best you can
to protect yourself set your own
boundaries
and maintain them from an officer's
perspective i really want to talk here
about dispatch priming
because dispatchers said hey be on the
lookout for this guy he's been in an
officer safety bulletin
he wants to kill cops he said he bought
a gun
and he's his sister said he's making
vague threats but those are all
vague things that are going down here
that's not a specific credible threat
these are
vague and general threats and when you
let dispatch priming to the point you
say oh this guy wants to kill cops
he wants to kill his family he's got a
gun then bad juju comes out
and that's exactly what i think happened
here notice that the officer gets out
with a gun
in hand and and again when you're primed
to say wait a minute i am going to have
to shoot this guy
because he's a cop killer and he hates
cops and he wants me dead and he has a
gun and wants to hurt his family
then very well you could use that that
way next thing i want to say this is an
iron sighted gun and he's going to take
shots at
very long distances you know again i
think the big issue here is about
can i and should i shoot not not you
know do i have the skill set in order to
do so
so again don't let dispatch priming get
you into a place where you've already
decided what level of force you need
to use because you've got to continue to
think now i want you to see what's going
on here and notice that
this guy is 50 yards away from the
officers measured in on google earth
from their positions
right at 50 yards away so it's kind of
difficult to see here this looks like a
picture of a sasquatch or something but
what i want to say is is does it look
like he has a gun in his hand does he
look like he's pointing anything at the
officer
are there any other private citizens
here that are an immediate threat
i certainly can't see that and so can
the our
officer articulate reasonable objective
evidence why he would use
deadly force in this instance i don't
think so so why would he
make this shot again at 50 yards with an
iron sighted gun what is the chance
number one from a pure marksmanship
perspective that he's going to be able
to make that hit
i don't think from the reactions that we
saw on camera that any of these shots
hit
but the bigger question is why did you
shoot in this instance
is there objective reasonable immediate
evidence of a deadly threat there's no
gun on scene
so that'll depend on kind of what the
officer says but i certainly didn't see
anything on camera now then he's going
to take that first shot
then he's going to take a second shot
here .7 seconds later and i gotta tell
you i work
very hard on my handgun skills and there
is no way a .7 split
at 50 yards with this kind of of
dark-colored backstop is going to be
okay he is winging shots
way faster than he can accurately see
second shot came back
0.5 second split so he is he's
winging shots downrange and the backstop
here is a building that could have
people in it it's a church
during the week probably not occupied
but still very dangerous we're gonna see
one more here
point four seconds so he took four shots
at 50 yards at this guy and i don't
think hit
any of them the bigger thing here though
is not about his marksmanship skills or
lack thereof it's about
why what are the what's the objective
evidence here didn't even give the guy
that as far as i can tell a chance
to actually comply and get on the ground
now the next thing i want to say if the
officer is
is uh in the situation of a deadly
threat notice he takes some shots he
starts running
notice that he looks down here to start
talking on his radio
guys please hear me if you are in a
deadly force encounter
take care of the fight no one's coming
to save you nobody's coming to get this
officer until the fight's already done
so win the fight first then get on the
radio don't get on the radio
and talk on your diary dear diary i'm in
the middle of a gunfight things are bad
you know bad juju is happening no win
the fight first
now the officer moves up to the 25-yard
line starts issuing commands and what i
want you to see right here is this guy
is fully compliant
i'll just about guarantee you that he is
not hit at this point because of the way
he's acting he's not acting like
somebody would with a bullet wound
as soon as he's hit with a bullet he
falls over on the ground so all those 50
yard shots have ended but you notice he
is hands
up completely okay man i am compliant
and now notice as well the officer takes
his hand off his gun to talk on the
radio some more you've already told him
where you are you've already told him
what's going on
let him get to you handle your problem
because he's looking down and trying to
talk on the radio
he has significant task saturation and
because of that
then when we see our guy put his hands
down we start asking the question why
and because our officer is talking on
the phone with his head down and his
eyes kind of looking through that not
the middle of his eye sockets he's not
able to solve this problem
and see that my guess is in most
likelihood this guy is moving around it
because his knees are hurting because of
the rocks that he's in
that he's gotten on his knees so the
officer is then going to issue some more
commands at the guy and tell him to put
his hands up and that's exactly what
he's going to do
hey buddy put your hands up and the guy
does exactly that so so again this guy's
hands up kind of hand down hands up
so he's not making furtive gestures here
if the officer is able to get rid of the
task saturation of not talking on the
radio when he doesn't need to
then he sees those things and says okay
this guy's having a hard time with that
rather than making a further gesture
because what ends up happening here
is he puts one arm down and the officer
takes that
in this particular instance as a threat
that this guy is now reaching for
something
i don't think it's a very good one
though because you notice he still has
the other hand way
up in the air very seldom do we see a
bad guy
keep one hand in the air and with the
other reach for something
in this kind of situation i'm not saying
it doesn't happen sometimes
but again given the totality of the
circumstances given that this guy's kind
of put his hands down and he's in a bad
spot whatever and
the other thing i want to think about
here officer's standing out in the
middle of
everywhere and even if he thinks this
guy might have a gun he's not got
himself to a position of advantage
because he's wasting time talking on the
radio
get yourself to a good position of cover
get yourself to a position of tactical
advantage
before you worry about your radio
because no one is coming to save you
get off the radio i think most cops are
a lot of times we see on badge cam the
radios causing problems now then
let's see this is when he decides to
make the shot
i do want to see that our our our uh
deceased man here i don't want to call
him a bad guy i mean he's not a good
person he's got lots of stuff bad going
on in his life
but here he's unarmed in those things
but you notice his right arm on the left
side for us
is down but by the time that the shot
breaks what goes down here you're going
to see the officer
break that first shot at 25 yards and
you see the guy's hand
is coming back up however what is it
coming back
up with and and the officer does have to
have objective reasonable evidence of a
deadly threat
now i know we can say here and i know
some real staunch officer supporters are
going to say
that you know hey this is a furtive
gesture and i think that
you can at the very outside make that
recommendation however
again i've never seen a gun on this guy
the only thing i have is he said he had
a gun
and he's made some vague threats not
that i've actually
seen him make any kind of aggressive
measure at anybody else second shot goes
off here these are quarter second splits
and by the time the second shot goes off
that guy has his hands wide up in the
air he is being as compliant as he could
be asked to be
but the first shot i think is the one
that hit him and was fatal the third
shot's going to go off here
at another quarter second split and
again i gotta tell you
i do not know very many people on earth
maybe 50 or 100 people on earth who can
hit
quarter second splits at an eight inch
like high center
chest shot at 25 yards and get accurate
hits
that tells me this officer is again not
using good marksmanship principles now
of course
that's not the big problem here the
problem here is decision making and
should he shoot but also the fact of the
matter is he is
absolutely panicked firing this gun is
what he's doing
he's not seeing enough of things to get
the kind of hits he would need
to ensure that he doesn't endanger the
public so that to me is is
fairly reckless given everything else
that's going on here and you guys know
if you watch the channel
that i am pro-law enforcement but i also
think we have to hold law enforcement
officers accountable
for the power that they're given and
when they misuse it we need to hold
those officers
accountable and i don't see anything
here given the fact there is no weapon
the threats were vague there wasn't any
actual credible evidence that he did
have a gun other than the fact that he
told his sister he'd bought one
yesterday
and so you know this vague kind of
threats there now then i think it's good
here that the officer does get himself
to a better position let's talk about
some tactics stuff here
notice that he's going to come up and he
had two hands on the gun for a minute
now he goes and gets a spare magazine
starts a tactical reload here it's going
to take him a little while to do it
i am not a big fan of the tactical
reload i know that tom givens of range
master for instance has offered
ten thousand dollars to the person who
can show that
for that they used the ammunition from a
retained magazine from a retention or a
tactical
reload and needed it to win a gunfight
it's just never been done
and so the better solution here in my
opinion is what tom would call a
proactive reload
that again drop the magazine that's in
the gun once you have the magazine up
and in your hand into it
drop the magazine out of the gun put the
new magazine in the gun you still got a
couple of spares on you
you're going to be fine the the
cavalry's going to be here in a couple
of minutes
so just drop the magazine in the dirt go
back and get it later so that you don't
have all these problems and one of the
big problems that he has
is he's trying to figure out wait a
minute i got a guy that i need to keep
an eye on
and now look at where his eyes are his
eyes are down because he's trying to
figure out okay wait a minute i'm going
to put this magazine away and hold on to
it
and and so he didn't even exchange the
magazine yet
he's actually going to do that in a
second so doing all this tactical reload
takes his eyes off what he still
considers could very well be a threat
and gets him out of the fight when he
wants to stay in the fight whereas a
proactive reload dump that that partial
magazine put a new one in
not have any more problems with it not
think about it anymore because you
notice here
when he goes to stole that magazine he
has to go down and look at it and this
is the way that things go in real life
now you might say wait a minute train to
the point
that you can put that magazine away
without looking at it and okay fine i
think you can say that but the reality
is a lot of times when we're gonna go do
something we look to that thing
unless we're very highly trained not to
so i think that that is a mistake here
but again it is the smaller mistake
quite frankly in my analysis here i
think this is an unjustified shooting i
don't see
that there is i i think that dispatch
priming puts himself in a bad place that
he was told hey this guy wants you dead
and therefore he had in his mind i'm
gonna have to shoot this guy before he
actually saw what had happened
and because of that the first time he
did see the guy he opened fire on him
and that reinforced the problem and
therefore when the guy
moved his arm the officer took that as a
furtive gesture and i think that's
the the fruit that comes from a poison
tree so officers hear me on this one you
know i love you you know i want you to
do a good job you know i want you to go
home at the end of the day
and i don't want you to go through this
and i don't want you to get indicted and
i don't want you to kill somebody or
shoot somebody
who doesn't need to be shot so make sure
again objective reasonable evidence
don't let dispatch prime you into making
bad decisions
not saying dispatch is bad i'm not
saying dispatch is doing that stuff on
purpose
all i'm saying is is that use that as
background information to make good
decisions
about what you see in the moment and
look at the hands look at the hands look
at the hands
because what's in his hands actually
matters and because of this there's
many protests in the city of modesto
there very well could be legal action
against this officer
particularly in light of california's
new laws about the use of deadly force
by
police and i don't want you officer to
go through that so instead i want you to
use
force correctly and legally and morally
right in order to cover your asp