By Steve Pomper
Cops occasionally think about various nightmare scenarios. Incidents destined to have bad outcomes. I had two I thought about on the job. One was being surrounded by a large group of aggressive juveniles. The other was facing a suicidal person armed with a gun but not pointed at me.
Teens are hanging out in the parking lot. They eye you as you enter the convenience store to grab a coffee. You come out. More have arrived, and about a dozen have gathered around your patrol car. Angry, they surround, taunt, and threaten you. What can you do?
You call for backup, but how close is the nearest officer? You obviously can’t shoot them, they’re “kids.” Despite they could overpower you and take your gun. It’s not possible to tase them all or even pepper spray all of them before they’d be on you. Finally, other officers arrive and the incident is brought under control.
Another nightmare scenario is responding to the suicidal person, gun to his own head, refusing to put the weapon down. He’s not threatening anyone else but, that could change in a proverbial heartbeat. Well, Huntsville, Alabama officers responded to such an incident, and, like I said above, the outcome was not good.
Jeffery Parker (suicidal man) is dead, and Officer Ben Darby has been convicted of murder.
Officer Darby arrives as back up and enters the house. He sees Officer Genisha Pegues talking to Jeffery Parker who is holding a gun to his head, and she is not pointing her weapon at him. According to bodycam video, Darby yelled at Pegues to, “point your fu**ing gun at him.”
Reportedly, Pegues and another officer are with a suicidal man who could become a homicidal man in an instant. It seems Parker could have easily pointed and fired at Pegues before she could bring her weapon up on target and fire.
Darby didn’t like the odds for Pegues whom he apparently felt was not following protocols for such an incident. He repeatedly shouts to Parker, “Drop the gun!” All the officers are in extreme danger as long as the man refuses to drop the weapon. Parker refused to drop the gun, so Darby shot Parker, stopping the threat.
Let the second-guessing and armchair quarterbacking begin.
First, as we proceed, please remember, this story is not lifted from a TV cop show. While, reportedly, Pegues felt she could “talk” the man down, and maybe she could have (or maybe not), but is it right to place other responding officers in such danger? What would we be talking about now, if that man had decided to point and shoot at officers? It seems he wasn’t yet ready to pull the trigger on himself. Could he have thought shooting at an officer would make them shoot him?
I’m not saying Darby did the right thing or that I would have done what he did. I don’t know. I wasn’t there, and video was not made public. Maybe if I were there or I saw video, I could make a better determination. I’m just saying there are some legitimate considerations that the prosecutor totally dismisses out of hand.
No one knew what Parker might do. Remember, the officer’s critics and the prosecutor admit Parker wasn’t in his right mind. Just because a person has mental health issues does not negate his or her ability to commit violence. I’m not overly concerned whether the person trying to shoot or stab me is sane or insane.
Cops are not psychic. The man called 911 and said he was suicidal. Maybe he is, maybe he’s not. The cops on scene won’t know his actual intent until after the incident is concluded and investigated and maybe not even then. All the officers on the scene know is they’re facing a man with a gun, and he won’t drop it. Officers can only anticipate and react to what Parker does—hopefully correctly and in time.
Regardless of any legitimate considerations, an Alabama jury found Officer Ben Darby guilty of murder. The jury saw the evidence, heard the testimony, but they still could have gotten it wrong. Now, Darby moves on to the appeal phase for which his attorney, Robert Tuten, says the verdict “won’t stand.”
There was splintered official support for Officer Darby with the mayor and police chief supporting him and an aggressive DA, Rob Broussard, condemning him. According to reports, the district attorney seemed inappropriately hostile toward the officer’s actions. Did he completely ignore an officer’s legitimate concerns and options in this circumstance? I suppose some lawyers may have a “cop TV” view of police work, too.
Just think about how colossally thoughtless this statement is coming from a district attorney. “Madison County prosecutors saw the case differently. Tim Douthit, an assistant district attorney, argued that Darby killed Parker because the man didn’t follow his orders to drop the gun.” Did you hear yourself say those words, Mr. ADA?
DA Broussard said the officer “was off the charts. He was not justified in any way.” Now, I can understand if someone disagrees with an officer’s actions because you don’t like the outcome, but for a prosecutor to totally disregard the officer’s perspective seems irresponsible. The considerations I mentioned above are legitimate concerns an officer must contemplate in seconds, during such an encounter. Broussard has had months and years to judge that officer’s “11 seconds after entering the house.”
The DA said the subject showed “zero hostility or aggression.” He had a gun he would not put down despite police instructions to do so. Sort of qualifies as de facto “aggression,” right?
DA Broussard praised Officer Pegues for “trying to help this man.” I have no doubt that’s what she meant to do. Having the emotional tether, she’d made with the man, severed by the gunshot and his death was obviously traumatic. But isn’t it valid to ask if she was taking a huge a risk—for all of them?
This is where hope and wish collide with reality. Every time I watch a cop show and see an officer or detective, not behind cover, attempt to reason with an armed suspect who refuses to drop his or her weapon—for whatever reason, I wince. Don’t TV shows that portray officers taking these life and death risks, because they “feel good” emotionally to an audience, do a disservice to real-life cops? Don’t they raise the public’s expectations of cops to “de-escalate any and all situations” to an unrealistic level?