Original subtitles

- I used to think the easiest thing

to do was to make a deadly force decision.

He tries to kill me, so I kill him, or I shoot him.

It's not that simple.

There were two times in my career

I almost shot a fellow officer.

I'm just lucky that things went down the way they did

or I'd have to be living with that.

- Twice I pulled guns on people and had them

tell me to just basically go to hell.

So what do you do?

You're standing there holding a gun and this guy's

coming at you, what do you do?

And not all decisions are easy.

You're looking at making a judgement that other people

have hours, if not days or weeks, to decide on.

And you have to do it when you're literally scared

out of your wits.

You're caught completely off guard.

(soft rock music)

- [Patrick] My name is Patrick.

I'm a husband, a son,

a former academic,

and a pretty deep thinker.

And for the last two years,

I've been on a mission to understand what happens

in the wake of an officer-involved shooting.

While traditional narratives have tended to focus on the

devastation and the confusion wrought by the bullets fired,

little attention has been placed on the experience

of the police officer who pulled the trigger

and the chain reaction of events that follows.

This film began in 2013 with the simple question,

and brought both my wife and I across the country,

digging a tunnel to the heart of the question:

What happens to an officer after a shooting?

- Keep your hands in the air and come toward me!

- [Patrick] When this project began,

we didn't know where we'd go or how far we'd travel,

but as we got further down the road

and met with dozens and dozens of people, we realized

that the men and women who are involved have a lot to say.

As a police officer myself, I stood ready to listen.

The following is a look, if only a glimpse,

into what it's like to be an officer involved.

(gunshot bang)

Did you ever think that you would be involved in a shooting?

- Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

You heard the stories of your instructors and older officers

who said, "I've been a police officer for this long,

"and I've never shot anybody."

- I never thought I'd actually be in one,

but I almost had the idea that I wanted to.

And I know most people would never understand that.

Most police officers will, but other people won't.

You get in this job to really test yourself,

physically, mentally, emotionally.

- You think about it.

I honestly didn't think it would happen,

especially this soon in my career.

I was employed full time approximately, say, eight months.

And this incident occurred.

- But wholeheartedly, did I actually think

that that was ever gonna happen to me?

No.

I never thought I'd be put in that situation.

I was aware it could happen.

- Most officers don't walk out looking for a gunfight.

In fact, I don't know any officer that does.

Or use of force situation.

They walk up in a situation

and for the most part are caught by surprise.

Or they try to control something,

and it goes sideways on them.

- People don't realize that about being a cop.

99% of the time it's just mundane stuff.

Doing a job, helping people.

Doing traffic, things like that.

But when all hell breaks loose,

there's nothing in the world like it.

And it always is remarkable to me that our men and women

in law enforcement can stand up to that.

- The other thing they don't realize is that we're human

beings, that we have fear,

we bleed just like anybody else.

We're not supermen.

Bullets don't bounce off of us.

- [Patrick] Who would want to be a police officer?

- People who wanna help take care of the innocents.

People need protection.

People are not warriors.

They go to work every day, I mean theoretically.

They have families.

But they don't understand they may fall prey

to the worst people there are.

They used to beat the living daylights out of me.

I was a child of the 60s.

I had hair down to my waist, and I was a pot smoker

and somewhat left of center.

And my perception of police officers was not protective.

It was fearful because I saw them as fascists at the time.

But once I started to see them as humans and see their

vulnerability, I knew that this was what I belonged doing.

I saw their humanity.

- [Patrick] Did you always want to be a police officer?

- No.

First I wanted to be a chef.

Then I decided, there's always been a little part

of me that wanted to be a policeman.

And the chef thing, I figured if I was a chef,

I like to eat too much, so I'd weigh 400 pounds.

- Yes.

Yep.

My interactions with law enforcement as a kid,

and on up into the teenage years was,

it was always positive.

That was kind of my guiding light,

as far as what I thought I wanted to do.

And then it just kind of, I never lost focus of that.

- Not at all. (chuckles)

My dad was a cop, and I went to college

and was gonna go to graduate school and just didn't really

wanna know what I wanted to do.

I would never pick this profession.

It kinda picked me.

- It was a career change.

Aside from the corny answer of, "I wanted to help people,"

which is always part of it, there was a practical aspect.

I needed to get a real job.

- Policing is the only occupation I can think of where we

take the employee and we send them out to do their job.

They get out there.

They do what they are expected to do, what in fact,

they've been ordered to do

which, in fact, they would even be derelict in their duty

to not do it, which is to protect themselves and the public.

They use the equipment that we gave them,

they use the training that we've provided to them.

They do it under the threat of life and death stress.

They do it very well, and then when the whole thing is all

over with, they are now going to be a de facto suspect

in a felony crime.

(camera clicks)

Where they will be investigated criminally to find out

if they're gonna be indicted on a felony crime.

They will also, typically, undergo an automatic Internal

Affairs investigation to find out if they're going to be

disciplined and or terminated, all for doing their job,

and in fact, risking their life doing it.

When you think about it,

that's a very bizarre position to put an employee in.

- [Patrick] After the shooting, what happened next with you?

- See, I'm not a smoker.

I grabbed a cigarette, and I started smoking.

I don't know why I did that.

It's probably the only cigarette I've ever smoked.

- I was kind of angry with him

for forcing me to do something like that, you know.

I didn't wanna do it.

- I remember, I walked down away from the house,

and I let out a scream.

And I believe that's the time

when I said "63," into the radio.

63, radio, 63!

- I copy 63. - Shots fired, 63.

- It's kinda like you see your life flash before your eyes,

and you wonder.

I don't know, I didn't think about it now, but now I think

about what would have happened if I'd died that day.

- Well, I look back around the wall and I see him outside

the wall shooting down the wall at me.

And I think, "Son of a gun, he didn't go.

"His chance to escape was there, and he didn't take it."

He no longer was forcing me in a confrontation

that he wants to get away, and I'm supposed to catch him,

now he's trying to kill me.

- But all I remember is walking up to him afterwards,

and thinking, "I'm glad I got you.

"I mean it was either me or you, and I'm glad it's you."

You can tell, it's 25 years later, man.

I'm still emotional about it, it still bothers me.

- The aftermath of the shooting is an extremely demanding

and stressful time.

In my opinion, once the gun smoke has cleared,

the officer's full-time job, and this'll vary,

from person to person, and situation to situation,

their full-time job needs to be coping with the aftermath

and all the many challenges that they're gonna be facing.

- [Patrick] What was it like, to tell your family?

- I called my parents.

My dad was alive at the time, and my mom answered the phone.

I said, "Hey lemme talk to Daddy."

She says, "Is everything okay?"

I say, "Everything's fine."

So I talk to my dad,

I said, "Hey."

He said, "What's wrong?"

I said, "Well, I just had to shoot somebody."

He said, "What in the hell?"

I said, "Well, he shot at me first.

"He missed, and I shot back, and I didn't miss."

And he said, "Fuck the son of a bitch!"

You know that's my dad, he's a Vietnam vet.

He was like, "Okay, once they're shooting at you

"they're just over with."

- And I decided to call Cathy, who's a trained negotiator

for some advice, and let her know what was going on.

I didn't know at the time, but he came back to the scene,

did doughnuts behind me.

So the last words that Cathy heard on the phone was,

"Oh, shit, I gotta go."

And the next time that we talked,

it was after the shooting was over.

We've got shots fired.

Everybody's okay.

But we got a guy who's uh,

he escaped from his house,

and he's driving around in his BMW.

He's 10-32, he's trying to do suicide by cops.

Oh, shoot, hold on!

(tires screech)

- And he remembers saying, "Oh, shit, I gotta go."

But I can hear this tire spinning behind him and I was mad.

I was mad that he called me, I was upset, I was worried.

All of the normal emotions and then,

that's kind of the dual role of,

"Well, he knows that's not safe, why did he do that?"

And then, "That's my husband, now I'm worried about him."

So that was kind of conflicting.

And I text him, a very angry text (chuckle) about calling

me in the middle of it and then, that was the cop in me,

then the wife in me took over, and I'm like,

"What if that's the last text I ever get to send him?"

- I could see it in my dad's eyes, he knew

and my mom was a little confused as to what was going on,

and she says, "Are you okay, what happened?"

I said, "I'm fine."

And I was relatively loopy from the pills they give

you to kind of bring you down.

I said, "I'm just gonna tell you now 'cause you're gonna

see it on the news in a couple hours anyway."

I said, "I just shot and killed somebody."

The look in my mom's eyes I'll never forget it.

It's like she was so sad.

- Even though my wife had been the wife of a cop for seven

or eight years at that point, coming home and knowing that

her husband had just shot and killed somebody,

she didn't know how to react.

She didn't know whether to give me a hug,

to hold me, to talk about it.

And so she didn't do anything.

And it was like, "Wow, what's happened now?

"Why is she treating me differently?"

And I'm telling you, all I wanted to do when I walked

in the door was get a hug.

I just wanted to have someone say, "Everything's okay."

And so that caused a lot of problems between her and I.

- Being raised in a society that says violence is not a good

thing and we have all these laws that say,

"Don't engage in violence."

But if you're a cop under these circumstances,

you get to kill somebody.

Sometimes folks such as myself, we think this through,

and it is a conundrum.

And then you do what you have to do to save your life

or another officer's life, and now it becomes a personal

conundrum and you have to sort it through.

- Emotionally they're probably just trying to come to terms

with what just happened to 'em and they're probably thinking

about what are the consequences of this?

- How do you come home and tell people that have no clue

what happens, "I just had to shoot and kill someone.

"I feared I would never see you again"?

How do you communicate that?

You don't wanna bring that stuff to your family

but it's there, it's an infection.

- And then other people don't understand.

And they're saying all these things, especially if it's

a media frenzy, a high-profile case, then it's gotta

be really tough and they probably even get picked on.

I think if I was involved in a high-profile case,

my kids wouldn't be going to school.

- [Patrick] Did you tell your children about your shooting?

- I didn't tell them right away.

When they started seeing it on the TV, things like that,

my daughter, she started asking me things.

I just told her that something happened at work.

But I didn't tell her anything really.

How do you tell a kid that daddy shot somebody?

- [Patrick] Did you speak with your nine-year-old

about the situation at all?

- No.

And, you know, to this day, 35,

I still haven't talked to 'em about it.

Neither one of my sons has really been interested

about what happened that day.

- I wanted to make sure that my daughters

and my loved ones heard it from me.

So I gathered 'em around and told them a version

that they could accept or that they could understand.

- I had to take a car and I had to pick her up from the

house and take her to a school function and I was working,

so I just picked her up while I was at work,

and I took her to the school function.

And then she looked up at the shotgun that was mounted above

the ceiling and she asked me, "Do you ever shoot, that?"

"Yeah, baby. I do."

"Have you ever shot anybody with that?"

"No, baby, I haven't."

"So you didn't shoot that man with that?"

"No, baby, I didn't."

"My friend told me you shot somebody."

"Yeah, baby, I did."

"Well, why'd you do that?"

"'Cause I wanted to come home to you."

- The officer is probably going to be exhausted.

They may have difficulties sleeping after the event.

Their body is gonna be flooded with extremely powerful

stress hormones and chemicals that helps them,

that's completely normal, helps them get through this life

and death situation that it takes some time for those

chemicals to clear out of the system.

- [Patrick] When did you finally get to sleep?

- I laid down probably around three or four o'clock,

but I didn't sleep.

I honestly for two, at least two days, I didn't sleep

because my mind, I mean you just would not believe

how many times your mind replays it and replays it and

replays it, and every time it does, it's just literally,

it jolts you every time,

especially right after it was fresh.

- They recommend, this is what you wanna try to do.

You wanna try to get some good rest.

You wanna try to, make sure you eat healthy meals,

stay away from caffeine, and told me all the things

that you wanna try to do, and they were very helpful.

But sleep didn't come for, I don't know how long.

I was just awake.

- This happened kind of early on in the shift so

I was generally up already, but man, I didn't sleep for

a long time.

Real long time.

You just don't.

It's like your body's tired but your head's just nonstop.

Just going 100 miles an hour.

There's so many unknowns at that point.

At least there was for me.

- I saw the, I saw the doctor for three weeks,

once a week for three weeks.

Then, I saw a different doctor, and it was probably

about five weeks after the shooting

I finally got probably a great night sleep.

- [Patrick] What's that five weeks like?

- Well, that five weeks, I was on the front page

of the paper the entire time.

They kept it rolling.

They kept talking about it.

The media wouldn't let it die.

- Police officers in our society are truly

one of the absolute foundation, the bed rock

of our democracy in the life that we treasure.

Another super important foundation is the media.

The media has one of the most important jobs in our society,

which is to find out what's going on, and to hold all forms

of government, all power brokers, whoever they may be,

in and around with government, accountable

for what they're doing.

And if they're doing things that are harming people,

it's the media's job to ferret that out, and to report

it honestly and fairly as much as they can.

- [Patrick] What was the media like in your case?

- The media was good to me.

And I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that

my department was so forthcoming with information.

I mean, we had our...

The chief held his first press conference

eight hours after my shooting, which is pretty quick.

You usually don't get a press conference that fast,

where they're actually putting out good information.

So they didn't have a chance to get it wrong.

- The suspect was armed with a assault rifle,

7.62 assault rifle.

After being hit, returned fire, knocked the threat down,

and outstanding job on his part.

We don't have body armor that can stop that.

I mean, our vests pretty much stop pistol rounds,

and this is a round that if he'd have hit the officer

in the chest, even though we have a mandatory policy

for body armor, it wouldn't have stopped that round.

That's a heavy duty round.

- Law enforcement can complain about the media,

but they really need to do better job of managing the media.

I don't mean that in a toxic way, I mean, build cooperative

working relationships with the media, and recognize that

they do have an important job to do.

And to do everything they can to assist the reporters

to do it in a fair, objective, and honest way,

so that the public is getting the facts, and not just

made up sensationalism or inaccuracies.

And when the media does it wrong, they do a lot of damage

to the police officers.

They do a lot of damage to the agency, and equally as

importantly, they do a lot of damage to the community.

- I remember in his situation with the female at the grocery

store just, I mean, it was like they would put anybody

on the news that was, supportive of her family,

attorney stuff, and just making up off the wall stuff.

- First thing, the news started out with was that

a female was holding a puppy.

Obviously, I knew that wasn't the case, and so did every

other officer that was at the scene and everything.

But that was really hard

because you do have people out there that actually believed

that on, that aren't police officers or whatever,

that she was holding a puppy, and no gun at all.

You know, it's just a puppy.

And obviously, that was not the case.

But they finally came through and said that

they did recover a firearm at the scene.

So, that helped a little bit, but it went

a long time with the puppy story, and that was hard

to not be able to, I wanted to be able to be like,

"No, it wasn't."

That made it really hard,

not being able to tell exactly what happened.

- I think information is helpful.

It's helpful in helping officers explain situations.

It's helpful in having those who are objective,

and wanna understand officers' behavior, how to work with,

why the officer did what they did.

It's very helpful information.

It's helpful information to the vast majority of people

who are unbiased or don't have a dog in the fight that

really wanna try to understand what the dynamics are.

But if you become immediately determined that whatever

is said by the media is the actual evidence about what

happened, I'm not certain that facts to the opposite

will change your mind.

- They tell you not to watch the news,

tell you don't get on Facebook.

What's the main thing you do is you get on.

I wanna know what anybody says.

What do people think happened?

You know, what's going on?

And then that's when it starts.

I mean, that's when you see the media

don't know what they're talking about.

They're telling me I shot some guy, there's no gun,

this and that, and it starts.

"Hey, a white officer shoots a black guy."

That's how it started off.

Okay, I'm not even white.

First off, they didn't ask me if I'm white.

Yeah, then I keep watching news, keep watching news

just five, six, seven in the morning,

I still ain't been to sleep, I can't sleep.

You see it on the news.

"Hey, you know, law enforcement discovered a gun

"hours later."

- [News Reporter] Police now say they've even found

a stolen gun in the area.

Here's how they say it started.

Fayetteville police officer, Christopher...

- That's not what happened.

The gun was beside him the whole time.

But they twist it to make it sound more dramatic

than what it really was.

- When I did see things they were either an exaggeration,

or not accurate, or completely false,

and there was nothing I could do about it.

(sighs) - Well, they made a big deal out of the issue of

the information was slow to come out.

Well, you know, to properly investigate stuff like this

it has to be slow to get out, and then the news media tried

to make a big deal out of it.

It seemed like, "Why you locking down the,

"why you trying to keep this from the news

"when this is freedom of information?

"Why are you trying to stop us from."

Everything that they said it seemed like

they were trying to put this doubt there,

and that really wasn't the case.

They were just trying to interview all the witnesses

before they released the information.

- The media just wants the juicy story

that's gonna to stir people up and sell newspapers.

They don't feel the reality of the officer

that goes home and cries for hours.

That holds his kids close because he's not sure

if he's gonna get another day at it or face prison.

They don't look at what the suspect did.

Just what the officer did.

- You don't sell newspapers and you don't sell commercial

time by being sensitive to the human behind the shield.

You create sales by sensationalizing the event.

And that's what media does.

The officer becomes a victim of false reporting.

Now the media is not accountable for not getting it right.

They want to be dramatic, and they want to create

the impression that they're the voice of conscience

and accountability in society.

Then tell the truth.

I try not to hate,

but that's hard with lying media people and attorneys.

Authority is very threatening and intimidating to people.

People in authority have hurt them in their lives

or they've had a rough break, or they feel life has not

treated them fairly.

Where do they take that out?

They take it out in prejudices.

And here's this symbol of authority.

And so the individual projects the source of all the

distress and frustration in life onto this individual.

- The interesting thing with officer involved shootings

is they fit within the perceptions of the community,

and long ago the phrase, "Cops are Rorschachs in blue."

Rorschachs are the ink blot tests that Jungian

psychoanalysts used to use, in which people projected their

thoughts into this nebulous, meaningless ink blot.

Cops are Rorschachs in blue.

They're reflections of the community, how the community

feels about force, about issues, about socialization.

And their reaction to shootings and use of force by officers

are really projections of the community

and the community perceptions on their state.

- When you ask people about police officers today,

because of the multiple media outlets there are,

they'll tell you a story about a cop.

"Did you see the cop on YouTube?

"Did you see what he did to that guy?

"Did you see the cop shoot that guy?"

I mean, what they see, they get a ten second

evaluation of what cop work is all about,

and they make determinations which shouldn't be made.

- [Patrick] In order to get an understanding

of how police officers' actions are perceived by those

outside of the profession, we traveled to California

where we spoke with Professor Matthew Sharps.

Professor Sharps is a forensic cognitive scientist

at California State University, Fresno.

For years, he has studied the human mind

and how we process information under stress.

- What we were interested in was the "shoot, no shoot"

decision, per se, because officers are frequently forced

into "shoot, no shoot" situations under very poor visual

conditions where the lighting is bad, where the timing

is awful, where there's simply not enough time to make

the proper decision, and then those same officers may very

well wind up in front of a jury, the individuals of which

have been raised on TV where officers will pull a two-inch

barreled revolver out of their pocket, fire from the hip,

and hit somebody 200 yards away.

There are a lot of unrealistic expectations.

We had one case where you decide to shoot by pushing

a switch which stops a timer.

We had another where you shoot

a toy plastic dart gun at the screen.

Now none of us are dumb enough to assume that's anything

like shooting a real gun, but the idea was to see

if dividing the attention among the targeting

and ballistic behavior and trying to interpret

the scene would do anything.

And oddly enough it did turn out that people

shot less with the dart gun.

What we found in a nutshell is that when we have a person

holding a gun on another person, about 80, 85%,

depending on the condition, of people shoot him.

So the Spirit of '76 is alive and well.

People do shoot the bad guy.

The problem is if he's just standing there holding a power

screw driver, waving it around as in an argument,

about five or six people go ahead and shoot the guy

with the gun, and approximately the same number

shoot the guy with the power screw driver.

They just interpret it as a gun,

that's what people actually do.

The vast majority, and these are conditions, our conditions

here are good lighting, you got all the time in the world.

They can't tell a gun from a screw driver.

Now what gets really interesting about that is we said,

"Okay, these people are just gonna sit in judgement

"on police officers as potential jurors.

"Let's get rid of the screw driver completely,

"just put in the gun."

How many of them will think a police officer

should ever fire in those conditions?

Now, this is a must shoot situation.

We had senior commanders,

we had tactical officers advise us on this.

We've got an individual aiming the weapon

right at a victim, okay.

Every, every one of our tactical officers,

every commander says it's a must shoot situation.

Officer has no choice but to shoot, okay.

11% of our civilians agreed.

So, over four-fifths of our civilians shoot the guy with the

gun, or the guy with the screwdriver, but, about one in 10

on a 12 person jury, that's a little over one person, thinks

an officer should never fire under the same conditions.

Now, I think this is pretty important for any officer

who might wind up going before a jury

as a consequence of an OIS.

- Ladies and gentleman,

it was a cold blooded, premeditated murder.

It must be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Call the first witness please.

- In that work we also asked people, "What are your reasons

"for a police officer shooting in a situation like this?"

We got amazing things back.

The officer should not fire unless he knows exactly what

the person is thinking about, your local clairvoyance

kind of beep, beep, beep, you know.

How are you supposed to read minds?

Especially in the fraction of a second

you have in a shooting situation.

These are samples of what people think,

and we did not cherry pick these.

These are what people give us.

This is a female assailant.

She may be threatening a person's life, but the officer

has to convince the suspect to drop her gun.

Okay, how are you gonna have that conversation?

But these are the two good ones.

These are the ones I think are important.

No, that should always be the last ditch effort.

If necessary, shoot a leg or arm.

Take them down, not to kill.

That's right out of TV.

Here's another one.

Only if he is certain it is a real gun, (chuckle)

and the situation poses a threat to others.

A shot to the leg is, this is amazing, a shot to the leg

is relatively harmless if he is trying to escape,

which means he is most likely guilty.

I don't know if the grasp of ballistics

or constitutional law is more appalling there.

You notice a lot of these people, again we did not cherry

pick these responses, a lot of people think that the officer

should shoot at the hand or the leg.

Obviously police departments don't teach that.

They teach center mass for very sound tactical reasons.

This is what I mean by this huge gap between what people

think of police work, and then the average person on the

street, as it were, thinks of police work and what really

goes on in the real field.

- If you do a force quick eye blink, that force quick

eye blink will take 18 one hundredths of a second.

If you do an average eye blink,

it's about a third of a second.

So, when people say, "Oh this happened in the blink of an

"eye", they're really talking about a third of a second.

But if we're looking at a punch, a very quick jab,

it's less than a fifth of a second.

If we're looking at a thrust it's a quarter of a second.

If we're looking at the swing of an impact weapon

like Muay Thai sticks, or a pool cue,

it's 17, 18 one hundredths of a second.

It is the speed of a quick eye blink.

If we're looking at an edge weapon attack,

our research tells us that an edge weapon attack

can occur at a distance of seven to nine feet,

and that can happen in two thirds of a second.

That's one eye blink plus.

And if we look at a gun fight, guns can be pointed

at an officer and fired in a variety of different

circumstances depending upon the movement and alignment

of the gun with the officer.

In other words, the assailant is shooting directly

at the officer, or tracking and shooting,

and that time frame is a quarter to a half a second.

(gunshots)

Officers, to shoot someone in the arm or leg,

means the officer has to be able to predict

that limb movement, or the limb is not moving at all.

And I'm not arguing against limb shots.

Where possible and where needed, I certainly would endorse

them, but an officer, well here's an illustration.

If I'm moving my hand around, and I'm moving

in a predictable fashion, you can track it and follow it,

but once I begin to move in an irregular fashion,

you cannot predict what I'm going to do with my hands

or when I'm going to do them,

and that means you can't be accurate with a shot.

- We tried that.

We tried.

We tried to end it without ending her life.

But it just wasn't possible in that situation.

- I tell you what, I'm a good shooter.

And I don't mean to brag about it,

but I shoot competitively.

I shoot three gun competitions.

I'm on the SWAT team.

I'm an intermediate sniper on our SWAT team.

But there is a little bit a part of me in the back

of my mind that said, well, maybe I could.

But then when I was in the situation, I mean, it was clear.

There was barely time to shoot him in a vital area,

plus looking at the autopsy results afterwards,

he did get shot in the hand and in the arm several times,

and it didn't do anything to stop him.

- There are some incidents where it's so clear cut.

If someone coming out of a bank holding a young woman

or an elderly woman by their throat and pointing a gun

at them, you shoot them.

You feel good.

It's satisfying, you saved someone's life.

But those are rarities.

- And if your partner is killed, there's always occasionally

these tragic cases where officers are attempting a hostage

rescue, and the hostage winds up getting shot by the police,

and maybe even killed by the police.

I've worked with a couple of those kinds of cases, and those

are extremely traumatic for the officers, and clearly much

more difficult for the officers to come to terms with.

- My name is John Dempsey, and we're at Riverdale Police

Department in Riverdale, Illinois.

I was a police officer here for 13 years, and I have also

held other positions within the village of Riverdale also.

I was recently promoted Sergeant.

Wally Rolniak, my partner, was killed.

We came on the job together.

We were detectives for four years together

before I was promoted to Sergeant.

The night that he was killed, my brother

was the detective sergeant on duty,

and Wally was the detective, and I was the patrol sergeant.

They had a subject in custody for kidnapping,

attempted murder, and several other charges.

When the interview was done, he was taken down

to the lock-up area by Wally, just by himself.

At some point when Wally was taking him down the stairwell,

the bad guy disarmed him and took him out of the police

station at gunpoint.

- [Sgt. Dan] We have a hostage situation.

The bad guy got out of the station.

He's got Wally at gunpoint out in front.

- [Dispatcher] Where at?

- [Sgt. Dan] Out in front of the police station.

- [Dispatcher] In front of the police station?

- [Sgt. Dan] Yes.

He walked him across the street behind

a bar and then shot him in the head and killed him.

(gunshot bang)

He's at Packy's, Wally's shot!

- [Dispatcher] Dan where are you?

- [Sgt. Dan] Behind Packy's.

- [Dispatcher] Behind Packy's?

Dan, okay, we're coming.

Behind Packy's.

- After that, he attempted to car jack three other cars.

He shot one guy in the car who got away.

Attempted to car jack another car, they got away.

- [Dispatcher] Is this an emergency?

- [Caller] Yes.

There's this guy in the middle of 138 Street with a gun

trying to get into anybody's car that he can get in.

- [Dispatcher] Yes, where is he now?

- And then he attempted to car

jack a third car and got away.

And by that time, myself and other officers were on scene.

And he pointed his gun and we got in a shoot-out

and ended up killing him.

- [Dispatcher] Do we have him?

- [Caller] Yeah they shoot him.

- [Dispatcher] Okay we're there.

Thank you. - Alright.

- It was a good few minutes,

there was quite a shoot-out in the middle of the street.

And the phone calls that came in that we heard afterward,

people calling in who were witnessing,

in the middle of the street a shoot-out with the police

and the bad guy was kind of unbelievable.

- [Dispatcher] I know, we're all out there, thank you.

- [Patrick] Did you ever worry that charges

might be brought against you for your action?

- No.

And to be completely honest,

it was the only thing that helped me.

Was knowing that the guy that killed

my partner was dead also.

When people ask me about that, that's what helped me.

A lot of people try to reach out for you,

you know, the services, two-day services, funeral.

Overwhelming.

Did not want to talk to anybody else.

So I kinda withdrew and felt alone.

Didn't know what was gonna happen, what I was gonna do.

Still couldn't understand what had happened,

why it happened and everything.

Guilt, because I was alive, I had two daughters.

My friend had just lost, lost their dad.

A lot of guilt issues.

And it was just confused,

just didn't know how to process it.

- [Patrick] What was the guilt about?

(sighs) - One was that I was alive and that my brother

was alive, and almost, thank God it wasn't my brother.

Then the guilt that it was Wally.

The guilt of what I felt.

But I was alive, that I had no right feeling guilt.

I had no right to ask for anything, to ask for help.

To feel bad, because I was alive and he was not,

that my daughters had their father,

and that his daughters did not have a father.

I remember the department sent me some flowers about

a month later, I threw 'em in the garbage and figured

"Fuck everybody, I'll deal with it on my own."

I don't want, that's when I, I don't wanna talk to anybody,

I don't want anybody talk to me.

'Cause I knew once it was over, life will go on.

Nobody in my eyes, nobody would give a shit what happened.

They'll bury him, give him the flag.

You get a medal.

That'll be in the basement hidden with dust someday.

And the only people who really give a shit

are the ones involved.

Their days went on, and we had to live with this

the rest of our life.

I'm sorry.

So there was a lot of anger issues for me with that.

I had to go for an evaluation where I met a psychologist,

which helped.

It was approximately four or five years after the incident.

That was a big turning point for me.

And it was about the same time I joined a bagpipe band

because I missed, I had to be a part of the police world

in some way.

Gotta admit, that was a big part of my healing.

I was around policemen, a lot of retired guys,

a lot of active guys,

but they did it for the right reasons, which I felt they

were there to honor the officers killed in the line of duty.

That was it.

What they have done for me, is just, I can't explain to 'em.

I don't think they understand.

And the trickle effect it had is so wide.

People, until they're involved, could never understand.

From my wife, to my daughters, to my family, to my parents.

My ma, my dad was gone at the time, he had died.

My brother, sisters, friends, old partners,

my old tac partner, to everything, to everyday life.

The questions are, "Why are you off?" or

"Why are you retired?

"Boy you look young to be retired.

"You must be, wow, you're lucky."

It affects it today.

"Why are you in a bagpipe band, what made you join?

"What's the sticker for?"

Everything.

Everything from that moment almost seems to revolve around

that night, that three minute incident.

In three minutes I said my whole life changed.

And now from the person I was before that because of that

incident, I am a different person because of that.

I accept that incident changed me,

and I am who I am today because of that.

And I have to accept that and it's not all bad.

So I think it was the four or five year anniversary after

he was killed I go to the cemetery.

I was gonna try and kinda get there before any family

arrived so I could pay my respects and leave cause I didn't

wanna, emotionally I just didn't wanna see them.

Went to his grave, paid my respects and I was leaving

I saw a car and I'm thinking "Oh shit",

somebody I thought I'd kind of get in and out for.

And it was his wife Maureen and his two daughters.

So I went up hugged each other and I'll never forget his

daughter saying, "Oh my god I thought everybody forgot."

And I'm like, "Honey we haven't forgotten."

And I think the one thing I want the families to know

is he's not forgotten and his family was,

I'll never forget his daughter saying that

when I said he's never gonna be forgotten, I won't allow it.

- [Patrick] What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

- When you're in a very stressful, very demanding event,

your body floods your system with stress hormones

or chemicals that put your nervous system

into a state of very high intensity.

For some people and we're not sure why, the nervous system

doesn't reset fully back to normal and the person continues

to have these physical symptoms of high intensity.

And some research shows that if you actually test their

nervous system they do have unusually high levels of these

stress hormone chemicals circulating in their blood stream

when they're not under an immediate threat.

- Over a period of time I was not sleeping.

I mean, this went on for years.

It was probably, I would say probably seven years after

the shooting, and it's not just the shooting, it's the stuff

we see everyday, the dead babies, the suicide calls.

- They may feel kind of hopeless and disconnected from

the world and they may start to retreat more and more.

You may start seeing things in the case of police officers

more and more absenteeism, changes in behavior.

- So what you do is you withdraw

and you treat your family like they're outside,

you shut them off and so you lose them.

I don't know how many times I've had to teach police

officers, you need to tell your loved ones how you feel,

cause otherwise they don't think you care about them,

they don't read you right.

They see you withdraw to a computer

or sit in the dark drinking.

They think you don't love them.

They don't realize that you're twisted inside.

- And I remember my wife packed up and left.

It was a Sunday afternoon and she took my daughter.

I'm glad she did, 'cause that's the day when I realized,

I gotta get my shit together,

and I've been taking it out on all the wrong people.

- I believe that most instances of uses of lethal force

are life changing, and never go away.

Doesn't mean you can't work,

doesn't mean you're gonna become a shoplifter.

I have post traumatic stress disorder several times.

I can't count as many times as I've had it.

And all it means is an incident pierced your calluses,

you're not able to use your normal psychological

defenses to deal with it.

The mind stopped processing things the way it normally did.

So you wanna call it post traumatic stress disorder fine,

but it's an infection in the soul,

of the mind and the soul and the heart.

And that doesn't change.

There's research I've read that states that two

out of every three people who are law enforcement officers

that use lethal force will have short lived the finite

stress reactions but go away,

and one third will have prolonged and severe.

I believe that.

- In me coming forward, it made the door, I can't believe

how many people came up to me out of this job that I work

with and said, "I had the same thoughts.

"I thought about suicide, I thought about this."

Going through a divorce or whatever,

and that they thought about stuff,

and I'm like I made it okay to be public about it.

- Couple of weeks after my shooting I sat down

on my couch in my living room, put my gun in my mouth.

I was done, I couldn't take it.

I was going crazy,

just the thoughts that were going through my mind.

I had two little kids sitting down the hallway

in bed and that's what stopped me.

Never in my thought process did I think I was wrong.

I didn't think I was crazy.

It was just there, I couldn't take it, I was done.

I had the opportunity to sit down with some really, really

good psychologists afterwards, even after that had happened.

I sat down with my doctor and he looked at me, and he goes,

"Before you say a word, I want to tell you that

"you're experiencing A-B-C-D-E",

and he went down the list of things.

And I hit every checkmark.

And he said, "You're perfectly normal for doing that."

- A commander who calls a cop who's off duty after

a shooting incident, will gain for themselves a loyal

employee who'll follow them into hell's mouth.

A commander who ignores their officer,

will buy for themselves an embittered, often cynical police

officer who feels, "Well gee, I could have died and this

"department don't care enough to find out how I'm doing".

Very rarely is there ever a concern expressed about,

"Are you okay?

"You faced death, we're glad you're alright.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

Because the liability concerns of people in management

often determine how that officer is treated.

Many officers have told me that what really traumatized

them about their shooting was not the shooting itself,

but how they were treated afterwards.

- Pretty much rolled up on, an active shooting

in the middle of the street, just randomly.

Guy gets killed.

When I got there I could see people running with guns.

Guy has a gun in his waistband and he's digging for it.

And I start pulling on the trigger.

And I stopped.

Something told me, "Let him get the first shot off.

"Just one round.

"Hope he doesn't get you in the face,

"but just let him get that one round off."

The streets were so crowded.

I knew someone would see him shoot at me first.

The scene calmed down, he ditched his gun,

everything was okay.

I was clearly shaken up, because I realized I was going

to let someone shoot at me 'cause I was terrified

of the repercussions.

I knew if I'd pulled that trigger again,

that would have been the third in 18 months.

I would have been so screwed.

I would have been a trigger-happy,

abusive whatever cop, and I didn't pull the trigger,

and I should have.

And the chief shows up on the scene about 10 minutes later,

and he walks right over to me, next to a dead guy,

and he says, "Ian, you're one of the most cursed

"individuals I've ever met.

"You are like a shit magnet."

- My chief showed up not long after that, and he asked me

if I was alright, and we talked for a few minutes.

My chief, during that whole process, that night,

I could not have asked for a better treatment with that.

And I think it was due to his experience,

having been through it himself and being a cop's cop.

He knew what I was going through at the time.

- That night our former chief

went to the family's house of the perpetrator.

Went to his family's house, and sat with them for a while

and told them everything that was gonna happen

with the investigation.

I didn't hear from him for about two weeks.

- And I've actually been involved in deadly force situations

where an officer has been disciplined completely unrelated

to the use of deadly force; either the car chase or the way

they handled the radio traffic, or the way that responding

units were handling the situation.

Whereas the criminal investigation, they were clear,

and the grand jury, they were cleared.

But the department, either for a training purpose,

or for just straight discipline,

had some problems with the officer's actions.

- Honestly, right now, I'm terrified.

I don't know what's going on as far as my department.

I don't know what's actually happening, but I feel like,

kinda like a guinea pig or about to get thrown up under the

bus, 'cause you hear about stuff like that happening so I'm

like okay, it's been 15 months, I'm not back on the road.

Y'all making up some kind of phony policy

that I so-called violated in their opinion?

- In the administrative end the department is looking

at whether or not they followed policy,

whether or not they followed state laws,

so in that regard it is the department.

With the homicide investigation, it's the investigators

who are familiar with the use of deadly force

making a determination.

In the prosecutorial investigation, it's the prosecutors

who are presumed to know the law and then work through it,

looking at all the facts.

But ultimately, when you stand in front of a grand jury,

those are private citizens.

- The same system and processes that criminals

are put through, are the only ones that are available

in an investigation.

There's no separate procedure for police officers.

We know you're a good person, we know you wanted

to get this person help, they didn't let you.

- [Patrick] Were you worried that you might get charged

or sued?

- No.

Not at all.

- No, and only because he shot me first.

I mean, there's really no better example of self-defense.

He shot me in the head.

- Yes.

But at the same time, I know I did the right thing.

- My biggest fear was a grand jury.

- Policemen can't get a, in my opinion,

can't get a fair shot in a grand jury investigation.

- You can have an officer cleared in the administrative

investigation, cleared in the criminal investigation,

cleared by the prosecutor's office,

including the grand jury,

and then they can still get sued.

When the officer's cleared of the criminal charges

and the administrative investigation,

well all they know is that they're not gonna go to jail,

they're not gonna be criminally charged,

and they're not gonna be suspended or terminated.

- They should expect it.

They are likely to be sued, because people can always

sue you, whether or not you did anything wrong.

- I am being sued.

There's a civil suit going on right now.

Brought by, well the suspect's father, the estate.

- What upset me was when I got called into the States

Attorney's Office and the first word out of the States

Attorney are, "What's it gonna take to settle this?"

And I came unglued, I said, "We're not settling anything.

"It's your job to defend me, and to defend this county."

"Well, it might be cheaper to just give him a small payout."

"No, because then that goes on my record."

- This one they sued us for, was it $3 million?

And that went on for, I bet it was close to three years

before that, before they withdrew that lawsuit.

- Being involved in the actual shooting's stressful enough,

and then you gotta deal with, years afterwards,

of wondering if you're gonna lose your house, your job.

It was tough.

- It almost makes you angry to think, I mean like I said,

100% did what I had to do, know it's what I had to do,

but then to think, you're basically gonna punish my kids

and my wife 'cause, you know.

- You made poor choices.

- Yeah.

- [Patrick] What are some of the things that you've seen

in your research, or working with the officers,

that they experience after a shooting?

- Guilt.

I know one guy that,

he felt guilty 'cause he didn't feel guilty.

- Over time, I wasn't feeling guilty,

but I ended up feeling guilty because I didn't feel guilty.

Does that make sense?

- What bothers me is how could a person

put himself in that situation, jeopardize his life?

And the people that it's gonna affect,

it's not him, it's his family.

It's the officer.

- Because no matter who pulled the trigger,

the end result is the same.

It's that a mother and a father are without a daughter.

Friends are without a loved one.

No one wins on any end.

The only thing I walked away with that night was my life.

Everything else is a loss.

The family of that girl will never understand.

I will never understand.

I'm done asking questions.

I'm done thinking, "Why did she make me do that?"

Because the bottom line is, is it doesn't matter, not now.

I could've helped her, I wanted to help her.

I envisioned, when I first got there, even with the gun,

I envisioned me sitting at the hospital with her,

talking to her.

There is not a day that goes by that I don't see her face,

and wish she had let me help her.

- I think I separated myself from it for a very long time.

I knew what happened, I knew I was involved,

but I couldn't allow myself to feel their pain.

- [Patrick] Did you try to distract yourself from it?

- Yeah.

I ate a lot.

I've gained a lot of weight since that occurred.

So, emotional eating.

- I was involved in a shooting myself when I was a young

police officer, killed a guy who was trying to murder

my partner with a butcher knife.

And one of the things in the training that I received,

when I was a young police officer they said to me,

"If you get involved in a shooting, you're gonna experience

"these three things, these four things, these five things,

"whatever," in training seminars.

Lo and behold, I get involved in my shooting,

and I never had a problem sleeping,

never had a problem with appetite, so on and so forth.

And I was thinking to myself,

"Maybe there's something wrong with me."

Because I was told that all this bad stuff

was gonna happen and that didn't happen.

Now, I had some other negative reactions, but that has

more to do with my philosophy on life and my religious

upbringing, and so on and so forth, and the doctrines

that I held to in terms of my faith.

The whole notion of "Thou shalt not kill,"

and what does it mean, and many people say actually

it means, "Thou shalt not murder."

And there's a distinct difference between

malice aforethought and defending oneself,

or trying to protect another person.

But I think that if someone has a sense,

whether it's rooted in religious faith from

one of the Abrahamic faiths or from some other locus,

another religious tradition, or for whatever reason

that's just how their philosophy in life is,

taking a life or severely injuring someone,

can be something that is disconcerting.

- [Patrick] Did you ever have any spiritual considerations

after your shooting?

- I was raised in church.

I consider myself a man of faith

and I consider myself a Christian.

And one of the things you hear over and over and over again

is, "Thou shall not kill."

I mean, you hear that over and over and over again.

Based on my interpretation of what I've read and what I've

been taught growing up, I don't know of any exceptions

in there that, "Thou shall not kill", except for in combat

or in suicide by cops situation or whatever.

On that end of it, yeah, 'cause it's kinda worrisome.

- I remember saying to my mom, I said, 'cause right after

the shooting I went down and I said, "I killed a man,

"and I wonder if God will forgive me."

- Do I have to drop down on my knees and beg God

for forgiveness for taking somebody?

Well no, because, again, it wasn't my call to make.

It wasn't a decision

that I made to put him there with a gun.

The decision I made was to go home, was to save my own life.

And so I'm pretty sure my God will be okay with that.

- I believe in God.

And one of the commandments says, "Thou shall not kill."

But in my job I had to kill in order to try to save a life.

- What I have found, the biggest thing I've found

in officers with faith is that they tend to perform

extremely well, especially when it's in defense of others.

That's the great thing about Pete's story.

You've probably talked to him.

But he saw himself as being put there by God

and that he had special skills and a special ability

to end this developing blood bath.

- Let's try to come up with a mathematical, statistical.

What would the word be for it?

Not equation, something much more complicated, algorithm.

Okay, space and time, a given area, a given distance, okay.

It's pitch black, this guy we don't know where he lives,

and for me to be sent there to get there as fast as I did

and then place myself in a position of his line of travel

where I intercepted him or got his attention to the point

where he has ambushed me, and then there's a confrontation,

it was stopped.

Two in the morning, seriously, is that coincidence?

My mother's very, very, very religious and she goes,

this was her analysis of the whole thing.

It wasn't to do with what had just happened.

You know what her response was?

She goes, "You know, you are so unscathed that I am very

"interested to see what he's preparing you for."

- Human beings are resilient.

If you think about it, we didn't get to the top of the food

chain as a species by being a bunch of pantywaists.

And human beings have been involved in conflict against

other animals because we haven't always been predators,

we were prey for a long time,

and in some places in the globe we're still prey.

And at any rate we're resilient in the face of challenges,

physical challenges, combat, and so I think that what

happens very simply is most police officers, like most

human beings are resilient, and they triumph in a moment.

They survive a shooting, it's a major life event,

they integrate it into their life and they move forward.

- Your brain has to assimilate and accommodate it,

and so it's normal to dwell on it over and over and over

again for a period of time.

What we want to see happening is that this gradually

begins to drop off.

As your brain makes sense of it and you start to accommodate

it into your life view and come to terms with it,

you gradually think about it less and less, you dream about

it less and less, until eventually it becomes like any other

exciting and/or stressful memory, where you can think about

it but you don't have that same sense of mental

and emotional intensity.

- My experience is the vast majority of officers are good

cops, know what their business is, handle things correctly.

If a mistake is made, it's often times because they weren't

thinking correctly, they didn't have sound training, so on

and so forth, but that leads us down a whole other path.

- My name's Steven Roach.

I've been a police officer for 17 and a half years.

My dad became a police officer when I was four years old,

went to the police academy, so I was just a little kid

watching him start his career and from that point on

that was the only thing that I ever wanted to do.

I always wanted to be a policeman.

I think the problem that I experienced was

it was not what I had pictured or what I had envisioned

to happen, both during the incident and afterwards.

I would say that I thought that, every shooting situation

or most situations like that you would have time and you

actually make that decision, conscious decision to pull

the trigger, or to do whatever may be that needs to be done,

but that's not always the case and that's what I learned.

It was April of 2001.

I was working what we called a late power shift

for Cincinnati Police.

It was 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.

and I was just running a regular beat car.

A one man unit in Over-The-Rhine, which is a neighborhood

that at the time was a lot of drugs, a lot of crime,

a lot of guns, and a lot of violence.

- [Patrick] Who was Timothy Thomas?

- Timothy Thomas was a young man who was wanted

for warrants, most of them traffic violations.

- An officer that was working a bar detail

noticed an individual walk by that was known to him

and was known to have multiple warrants.

He tried to stop that individual.

- Timothy Thomas took off running.

He ran through an alley and a community called

Over-the-Rhine where I pastored for 25 years.

As Timothy Thomas jumped over a wall--

- Went down a, kind of a breezeway.

I've never been back there before,

not really sure what there was back there.

I continued down the breeze-way and the guy that had fled

came around the corner and he had one hand in his pants

and one hand on his waistband.

He was kinda looking behind him.

At that point I stopped, drew my firearm,

and ordered him to show me his hands.

At that point, he came out with the hand that was in his

pants, but he was continuing towards me and he brought

his hand out towards me and my instant thought was gun.

He's got a gun.

- And running towards Officer Roach, Officer Roach

pulled his service revolver, and shot Timothy Thomas,

and he died there in the alley on that night.

- When his hand went out from within his frame,

that's when I could see that there was nothing in there.

- And he was an unarmed black teenager who was gunned down,

so the community wanted answers, his mother wanted answers.

Why was her son shot?

(crowd chanting) - We want answers, we want answers.

- I was extremely upset over this situation.

It was very

difficult because I knew at that moment that,

that bullet was intended for something that

didn't end up to be true.

What I had seen initially was not the case.

Before he's even taken away from the scene the Commanding

Officer from the department, who's referred to as the Night

Chief, he's the Captain, came up to me.

He was probably there within 20 or 30 seconds.

He happened to be close by when it happened,

and he grabbed a hold of me and asked me, "What happened?"

And at that point I was still in a daze.

I couldn't tell you what happened, and my response was,

"I don't know, the gun just went off.

"It just went off."

And the main reason was I didn't know what had happened.

Everything had happened so fast and I didn't have that

chance to make those conscious decisions that I had

envisioned, and I didn't really know

why things had happened, other than what I had seen,

but I also knew at this point that he didn't have a gun.

I was called back to the homicide unit on that Monday night.

It was late.

I think I went at like 9 p.m. for a second interview.

Basically that second interview they showed me a video

that they had that did see me going down the breezeway.

You hear the shot on the video.

(gunshot bang)

- What the fuck was that? - Shot fired.

- Then the investigator basically tears into me saying that

what I'm telling them that happened, that he had had his

hands in his pants and that when I told him to show me his

hands and he produced that in my direction, he's telling

me that that cannot happen, that it's impossible.

- [Detective] It's killing me inside having to say this.

But your story don't add up.

I don't want to be in this position, I'd give anything

in the world to be taken off this case right now, 'cause

I don't like the position I'm going to have to be put in,

but I chose to be in homicide, but I'll tell you one thing

a reckless act is a hell of a lot more serious than a

negligent act to where you startled and you ripped one off.

It don't add up to the shooting the way you described.

I think it was an accidental shooting, like this guy scared

the living shit out of you when he came around the corner

and without you even realizing, you jerked the trigger

on your gun, and you got about the worst fucking luck

in world 'cause yours goes right through him.

- At that point I started thinking to myself maybe

he's right, because I didn't make the conscious decision

and it was the training and I really didn't know why I had

pulled the trigger.

So maybe he was right, maybe I did have my finger

on the trigger, maybe he did startle me.

So after probably an hour of him drilling me on that

I agreed that maybe that was the case,

maybe I did accidentally pull the trigger.

- [Detective] Am I correct saying now it was totally

an accidental discharge in you firing your weapon?

- [Stephen] Yes.

- [Detective] And you made no intent whatsoever

to shoot and kill Timothy Thomas?

- [Stephen] No.

- The bullet was an accident? - Yes.

- [Detective] Okay.

- And as soon as I said that,

pretty much the interview was over.

And then when I walked out and saw the chief

and got my bearings about myself, and I realized that that

was not the case, that I gave him the command let me see

your hands and that his hand had come forward towards me,

and I never again had the chance to correct that.

- There was three things happening,

there was protest, there was civil disobedience,

and there was legitimate rebellion.

Protest marches happening during the day continuously.

As nightfall came, there was more rebellion

and more civil disobedience.

Young people took over the streets.

Their anger spilled over,

and the streets became theirs for three days.

We went into city hall, demanded answers.

I was the president of the Black United Front,

which interestingly enough was an organization that started

the year before when 13 downtown restaurants closed

their doors during a Jazz Festival and wouldn't

serve African Americans.

So we went into city hall and we got no answers.

We told them to lock the doors,

nobody's leaving 'til we get answers.

Members of the Black United Front will stand at the doors,

because nobody leaves until we get an answer.

The question is why was he shot?

- Nobody's leaving.

(clapping) (shouting)

- We eventually left and that's when

people took over the streets,

and it was an interesting time.

- There was looting of stores, there were fires.

There were people just throwing things,

throwing all kinds of things, rocks,

and it was just chaos, it was total chaos.

(yelling)

I don't know.

I have just never seen so much,

just disorder and chaos.

- And some people wanted to characterize it as a race riot.

It was not.

There were black and white people out there.

People were angry at police brutality.

- Most of that, what was going on really had nothing

to do with the incident itself, because there were a lot

of questions that were not being released by the department

and a lot of unknowns,

but I beared, I felt the weight of all of that on me.

- But what happened in Cincinnati was not about race.

There were and are good white people who supported

the struggle, who still support the struggle.

- It was probably close to a month

after the incident that it was,

went to a grand jury.

We were not asked to take a part in the grand jury.

I found out about the indictments like everybody else did

by watching it on TV, watching a press conference.

- Count one charges Stephen Roach with negligent homicide.

Count two in the two count indictment,

is a charge of obstructing official business.

- The shooting occurred in April of 2001.

He was indicted by a grand jury on misdemeanors only,

therefore the case was sent back to Municipal Court,

misdemeanor court.

There's 14 judges there.

The case was randomly rolled

and it was rolled to me by essentially lottery.

Everyone was sympathetic to me like something awful

was about to happen to me or had already happened to me.

So I was oblivious to that because I was excited about

having such an interesting case to try

with so many interesting issues and all the experts.

- It would be easier for me to say it was an accident,

but I'm not saying that.

That shot was fired intentionally, which is a harder

thing to say and it's a harder thing to live with because

I intended to do that,

just the circumstances turned out to be different

than what I believed at that exact moment.

I was indicted in May of 2001, and the trial began

on September 17th, 2001, six days after September 11th.

- The trial, I felt conflicted, because you hear some

evidence that's not favorable to Officer Roach and then

cross examination makes it come back to being favorable,

so as a judge there's some waves where it's like

"Oh, they've got some strong evidence,

"oh, the defense attorney kinda changed the facts

"around on that and now it's not so strong.".

So a trial with kind of ebbs and flows.

- I think I was portrayed as someone who was careless

and acted somewhat recklessly and because of that,

that this accident happened and because of this accident

and my reckless behavior that this person had been killed.

- At some point towards the end of the trial I actually

was upset that the prosecution had even proceeded because

it was so clear by the end, after hearing all the experts

called by the defense, that if they would have been

in front of the grand jury, the grand jury,

I don't think they would have even indicted him.

- I don't think we had any great expectations

that he would be found guilty, not in this system.

The fact that he was indicted gives some people a sense

of "Okay, maybe this time.".

The fact that the coroner would rule it murder

or maybe this time.

But when he walks home out of the court room scot-free,

Timothy Thomas is lying in the ground,

his mother lost her son.

We've seen it before.

- I wish people that were still against my decision

would watch the whole trial.

If someone really watched the whole trial, I think all

reasonable people would make the same decision I made.

I can't let sympathy enter in as part of my decision

in this case.

Police Officer Roach, you've been found not guilty

of the charges in this indictment.

You are free to go.

Thank you.

- [Patrick] Who was Timothy Thomas?

- He was a 19 year old, young father

of a young child at the time.

I know his criminal history was not violent.

- [Patrick] Is there guilt?

- Yes.

Regardless of what happens I still know that I took

somebody's life and I'm guilty of that, whether it be

criminally wrong or what, I know that that's what I did.

- [Patrick] If you had a message for him, if you had

a thought about him, what would it be right now?

- I don't have a message for him.

My message would be for Angela Leisure.

And that I hope she continues to deal with that grief,

the loss of her son.

That would be my message.

- These people might have been insignificant in ya'll lives,

but they were our lives.

- [Patrick] Have you told your children?

- No.

But I think there's enough out there, with media now

and the ability to look up the past, that there's no doubt

if I don't tell them they're gonna find out.

And I'd much rather them find out from me.

So I'm not really sure when, but I know that day is coming.

- [Patrick] Have you thought about how you'll say it?

- I've thought about it, but I really don't know

how I'm gonna say it yet.

It's kind of a hard thing to tell your kids.

- [Patrick] Do you think they'll still see you as a hero?

- I hope so.

- [Patrick] What was it like to go back to work?

- I drove to the very spot where the shooting

had happened 15 days before.

And I stopped my car in the middle of the road.

And I picked up the microphone.

I said, "Salt Lake Charlie 35, I'm on duty,"

and the dispatcher said, "Welcome back."

And so did every one of my peers.

- Within the first week I was at two shots fired calls

in the same block that I was shot in, which was kinda odd.

That was kinda, I didn't hesitate, but it was just, you get

that kinda tingly warm feeling that you've been here before.

That first week we went to, my partner and I,

I was in the two man car one night, we had to go to a call,

and the only place to park my cruiser was the same spot

that I got shot in, and had to get out of the car right

where I was when I got shot, and that was kinda weird.

I got outta that little area pretty quick,

got to the other side of the street.

- I was off for three days, went back to work,

and one of the first guys as I walked in the station,

he goes, "Hey killer how you doing?"

It's like, "Holy cow.

"You've never been through it,

"but yet you just call me killer walking in the door?"

And so the way that people treat you

was a little bit different.

All of a sudden I'm put on this pedestal

like I'm better than everybody else.

Well, you know I wasn't.

I was one of the worst shots at the range.

People joked that the safest place on the range

is in front of my gun.

And here everybody thinks I'm a hero because I did this.

Now when I'd go out the next month and qualify,

I had three or four of the younger officers standing

behind me kinda watching what I did.

I didn't do anything different.

I was missing the target just like I always had.

- The one thing that really ticked me off, personally,

was the phrase, "How are you doing?"

After about the 100th person to ask me how I was doing,

I didn't like that question being asked to me anymore.

For what it's worth, "I was fine."

I just killed somebody.

How do you think I'm doing?

So, you know, I lied to people. "I'm fine," I wasn't fine.

- He'd say, "I'm okay fine, Doc, I'm okay-fine."

Well, when a cop would tell me that I would think

what they're really saying is,

"My guts are burning, I think I'm gonna vomit,

"I'm not telling you nothing, Blum.

"You wanna know what I feel?

"Read my mind."

That's "I'm okay-fine.'"

They weren't okay-fine.

They were horrified by what they had to do.

Hopefully in 10 years you're through with the lawsuit.

You've made peace with the memories.

It's not that they've gone away,

but you make peace with them.

And that's what you hope for.

- It's been 25 years and it still seems like yesterday.

- To this day when I drive by that street my head itches.

I don't know why, but my scar will itch.

- Now in everything I'm focused, I'm more alert.

Even off-duty.

You go to a store, you're always looking out.

- Professionally?

I've slowed down.

I have slowed down.

Three kids and a wife at home.

My incident, from the minute I closed my driver door,

from the time the last bullet rang out,

was I believe 18 seconds.

If it can happen that quick I'm gonna slow down.

- That shooting made me realize what I had to lose.

My kids.

At the time both my parents were alive.

My friendships, I took all of that for granted.

Now I take life a little bit sweeter.

And I don't miss out, and I know for a fact

that life can change in a very fast second.

- Once you see evil face to face, you're changed.

You're never the same.

How can you be the same after seeing that?

But I'm a strong person.

I've been through a lot in my adult life,

and my faith keeps me going.

- Once I retire and give this badge up, I'm still gonna be

on the world wide web, all you gotta do is google it.

I'm gonna be the murderer cop that everybody said I was

on that day.

- If you're an administrator and have never been through

a shooting, you aren't gonna know what impact

it has on an officer.

You can go to classes and Larry Blum can talk to you about

what happens to an officer, but until you've been there

and you've lived that and you've experienced it.

Somebody that has never been, a police chief's never

been through a shooting, probably wouldn't walk up

and give his officer a hug.

He wouldn't know.

He would think, "Well I've gotta be the strength here."

Well, you know what, you don't have to man.

You can walk up and cry.

And I've done that with two of my officers

here that were involved in a shooting.

We sat in this office and cried together.

- I didn't show no emotion out there.

I didn't,

I didn't show no emotion, I just went with the flow,

you could say, but in your head of course you're like,

"Fuck, this just happened."

So, I'm at the point that it's in the past.

I just hope that it doesn't happen again.

But if it comes down to it, it comes down to it.

(gunfire)

(faint sirens wailing)

(gunfire)

(radio chatter)

- [Officer] Secure the whole scene.

- This month is one year.

We were checking license here

and the two officers had cars strung.

There was just lot of cars waiting

to go through the checkpoint.

And so I started checking license and I was doing

the assembly line, checking license, and I was like,

"Okay, looks good, okay, looks good."

And the traffic kind of got held up for a second,

and I got this lady's ID.

I looked at it, and it was the same last name that

the suspect had, and the same road address,

and I went, "Oh, crap."

And I looked at her and it was his wife.

And I looked at her and she knew who I was,

and I think she saw the surprise in my face.

I looked back at her and she said, "Do I know you?"

I said, "Yes, ma'am you do."

She said, "I've been praying for you."

And I said, "Well I appreciate that.

"I need all the prayer I can get."

She said, "I know you went through a lot.

"But we both went through a lot."

And I said, "Yes, ma'am I have, and I appreciate it."

I gave her her license back and I said, "Drive safely."

She said, "Have a good day."

She said, "The Lord works in mysterious ways doesn't he?"

I said, "Yes, ma'am."

- [Patrick] Let's just say he did go up to that truck.

- Okay.

- Devil's advocate. - Right.

- [Patrick] He did go up to that truck.

He did shoot somebody.

What now goes through your mind?

- Why didn't I do my job, what I was trained to do?

Why didn't I react fast enough?

Why did I hesitate?

There's a moment in time where your number's called,

and you step up and you answer the call.

And that's what I did.

I didn't think about it.

I reacted.

And I did my job.

(sirens wailing)

(faint yelling)

- I don't like some police officers interpersonally,

'cause many of you can be very irritating to me,

but what you stand for is something I value greatly.

- [Patrick] A look, if only a glimpse,

of what it means to be an officer involved.

(soft rock music)