There is an old saying that goes, “The only reason that some people are alive is because no one has tried to kill them.” That could not be more true than it was for two officers who, fortunately for all of us, are no longer employed in a law enforcement capacity. Being a “Monday Morning Quarterback” has its obvious advantages yet also tends to draw the ire of individuals who say, “You have no right to criticize because you weren’t there.”

My response is, “That’s what’s so great about assuming the role of a Monday morning quarterback; you are unencumbered by all of those things that make decision making so difficult in the field.” In our line of work, mistakes get people killed. I do have the right to criticize (as do we all) because that’s how we learn. I encourage people all the time to criticize me and everyone else in our profession so that we can learn from our mistakes and see how other people would respond in the same situation. When you have the time to think through a problem you are much more capable of formulating an appropriate response than when you are under the pressure of the stressful moment. When you practice this problem solving technique regularly, you start to fill your mental toolbox with all kinds of things that you never would have gotten otherwise. That’s one way a Sheepdog gets the edge.

The purpose behind Monday-morning-quarterbacking is not to criticize per se; it is to learn from other people’s experiences and mistakes. Criticism is just a natural side effect of looking for ways to do something better than the guy before you. I know that having someone point out the things that you do right is good for stroking your ego but sometimes there’s just not time for that. Hopefully, if and when you become an adult, your ego doesn’t need quite so much stroking as it did when you were two! Therefore, if the person Monday-morning-quarterbacking you doesn’t point out something as a mistake, then that means by default that you did that particular thing right. So if you need a pat on the back, do it yourself. Don’t whine about not getting the pat from someone else.

I am about to Monday morning quarterback two officers in particular and if you think I am being too critical, you can stop reading. I keep myself and others alive by identifying screw-ups and trying to train people not to commit them. Criticism is not my primary intent but it is an unfortunate side effect of identifying errors.

Some readers may at first wonder why I chose to include this story in this particular chapter. The reason is simple: Sometimes a good way to illustrate a positive is to use a negative. I can give you a better idea of where North is if I show you South to go along with it.

At approximately 0130 hours one winter morning in the mid 1990s, a call came in to our dispatch center on an armed robbery. This was no ordinary armed robbery. Evil had the unmitigated gall (is there any other time that you can use the word unmitigated than preceding the word gall?) to perpetrate his despicable act at one of the most holy of law enforcement locales; the Donut Shop!

Two employees were in the store at the time when a scruffy looking African-American male, roughly forty years old, dressed entirely in black (Evil’s hallmark fashion preference) entered the store and sat down at the counter near the door. He ordered four donuts and engaged the employees in some small talk, asking if the donut shop was hiring.

When he decided that the time was right, with a certain calm like the eye of a hurricane, he produced a black semi-auto pistol and pointed it at the employees.

“This is a stick-up. Stay calm and I won’t kill you.”

As easily as most people order hot coffee to go, he walked around the counter and pressed his pistol into the ribs of one of the innocent employees.

“Open the register,” he demanded.

The terrified clerk complied.

“Get over there,” he barked, as he waved the pistol in the direction of the back room.

The employees did as they were told.

Evil then took all the paper money out of the register and put it in his pocket. Then he grabbed a to-go bag to put all the change in. Next he ripped the receiver out of the phone and gave one last order to the trembling donut shop attendants.

“Be calm. Wait 30 minutes before you call the police… I’ll be back to rob ya’ll again real soon.”

Evil walked out of the donut shop and stopped long enough to speak to a woman who was sitting in her car in the parking lot just outside. He had no way of knowing that she was the mother of one of the employees he had just terrorized.

“The donut shop will be closed for the next 30 minutes,” he said with a coolness that matched the still night air.

He left the scene on foot and disappeared into his natural environment.

Little did Evil know that the police were already on the way to the scene of the crime. The store manager had arrived at the store just in time to see Evil pointing his pistol at the cashier and had gone across the street to call 911.

As is so often the case, most of the officers were handling other calls and only one unit was in service and available. A second unit heard the call come out and vacated the call that he was on to start as a backup unit.

The first officer arrived at the scene and spoke briefly to the lady in the parking lot. That officer got a preliminary description and a direction of travel on the suspect and did what most good officers would do automatically; she went searching for Evil.

She turned down a nearby side street and casually scanned the area for someone matching the description of Evil. Apparently she was not expecting to find anything because Evil walked right up to her patrol car and pointed his gun in her face.

“Get out of the car!” he demanded.

The officer complied and later stated that she felt since he had the advantage she had no choice but to do what he said.

“Gimme your gun.”

As sheepishly as she complied with the first request she granted Evil his second wish. It was around that time that she reached down and pressed the little orange button on the top of her radio that sent out an emergency tone to the dispatch center.

True to form and policy, the dispatcher immediately tried to raise the officer on the radio to find out what her emergency was. When there was no response, the radio operator activated the attention tone that broadcasts the equivalent of that annoying “Emergency Broadcast System” attention tone over all of the county radios.

Evil heard the attention tone and naturally demanded the officer’s radio. As you might expect, the third wish was also granted.

“Walk towards those buildings,” he said as he pressed the officer’s own gun into her back.

“Have you got any money?”

“No,” the officer said as they walked toward the rear of the building.

“Do you know me?”

“No.”

“Good. You don’t know me and I don’t know you.”

When they made it around to the back of the building, Evil had apparently not decided what he wanted to do.

“Lay on the ground. Face down. Put your hands on your head.”

The officer had no problem assuming the customary execution position, yielding everything she had and everything she could ever hope to have to that pathetic excuse for a human being.

Something made Evil change his mind.

“Get up. We’re goin’ for a ride,” he told the officer.

Once again, with all the substance and fortitude of an over-boiled spaghetti noodle, the officer blindly did as ordered. As they walked back toward the officer’s car, Evil also demanded that the officer hand over her extra magazines for the pistol he had already stolen. Once again she complied. They continued toward the police car.

Evil said, “I’ll drive,” and he headed for the driver’s side of the patrol car.

Meanwhile, the second officer was looking for the first officer since no one had heard from her since she had activated her emergency tone. In a stroke of pure cop genius, the second officer drove up right behind the first officer’s car as she was walking toward him in the company of Evil.

The second officer then declared over the radio that the first officer was OK without taking so much as a second to realize what was actually going on right in front of his dim little eyes.

Evil, feeling in complete control and empowered by the abject cowardice of the first officer, ran up to the second officer and did a repeat performance of his first hostage-taking exercise.

“Get out of the car or I’ll shoot you.”

The officer later said in his official statement, “Due to the nature of the situation I complied with his commands and exited my patrol vehicle. When I got out he still had me at gunpoint requesting that I give him my weapon. I asked the subject not to shoot in which he replied, I’m not going to shoot you. You’re a brother.”

Evil took the officer’s gun out of the holster without so much as a protest.

During this time, the first officer was being completely ignored by Evil, so what did she do?

She could have pulled out her extra gun and ended the situation in the abrupt and violent manner that would have been so appropriate but she wasn’t the type of officer to be burdened with something like carrying an extra weapon.

She could have obeyed the first rule of armed combat which states: Exit the kill zone.

She didn’t do that either.

Instead, she chose to “low crawl” back to her police car to get to that all important radio to call for a Sheepdog to come and rescue her. Even that effort was botched since in her emotional state she called out on the wrong radio channel so it took a while for anyone to realize what was going on.

Meanwhile, Evil directed the second officer to get into the first patrol car with the other officer. The second officer had no back-up weapon either.

Evil then left the scene in the second officer’s patrol car. The first two officers “attempted to follow” Evil in the remaining patrol car but of course lost sight of Evil almost immediately.

To add one last insult to injury, the last line of the second officer’s statement reads, “My bullet proof vest was in my patrol vehicle at the time of the theft.”

I couldn’t make up a story like that if I had to because I would never think that something like that could happen in real life. Every detail is accurate and complete and together they offer a plethora of lessons to be learned. Rarely does making one mistake cause an officer too much trouble. Most officers who find themselves in a “world of shit” end up there as the result of a chain of mistakes.

It certainly seems to me that both of these officers had one thing in common: they never really considered the possibility that they might come face to face with Evil. Whether it is the fact that at least one of the officers left his protective vest in his police car or that neither officer approached either scene with any regard for basic tactical procedures, these officers are the epitome of the mindset that gets people killed.

The first time that Evil approached either officer, the officer was in a police car. My first thought would be to drive away. When you are so utterly taken by surprise and have not previously formulated an escape plan, you are likely to freeze. That is precisely what happened here.

Let’s not forget that each officer knew that they were looking for an armed robber yet neither had prepared for that meeting. Their alertness level should have been heightened to the point where no one could possibly sneak up on them, yet it happened not once but twice.

In my nearly two decades of working the street, never once has anyone approached my police car without my knowledge. My standard practice, if I cannot get out of my car to meet someone who is approaching me, is to draw my weapon and hold it close to my torso in a hidden “cover” position. Any sign of a threat means that Evil takes a minimum of one round point blank and probably many more. I can hear the liberal pansies screaming, “You can’t just point guns at people…” blah blah blah.

I really don’t care if someone gets offended as long as I get to leave the encounter alive. Incidentally, none of the literally dozens of people that I have pointed my pistol at in the aforementioned manner ever even saw the gun that was only inches from them. Like the officers in the story, they don’t expect to see a gun in my hand so they don’t unless I do something to draw attention to it (which I don’t).

I think that anyone with even a smidgeon of tactical sense can identify any number of times after the first officer met Evil, that a moderately skilled fighter or mediocre marksman could have put an end to the confrontation. The first such situation that comes to mind is when Evil asked the officer to hand over her firearm. My advice is never give up your primary weapon until you have dispensed all of the ammunition, preferably into the body and/or head of a well deserving Evil – and what better time to do so than when Evil asks for it?

Never assume, as the second officer did, that because an officer (or anyone else) is walking with a stranger that everything is okay. Take a moment to consciously assess a situation before you make a decision on what you are seeing. Later in the book you will see this referred to as the processing phase. Proper processing is a key ingredient in the proper handling of an incident.

Always have a plan B. I can never say that enough times or with enough emphasis. A natural segue from the topic of plan B is to always leave yourself an escape route so, if something does take you by surprise, you can make a tactical withdrawal to regroup and attack or, at the bare minimum, you can dodge whatever gets thrown at you.

There is no victory in defense.

Perhaps one thing we try to hammer into recruits is that no matter what happens you never give up. You fight tooth and nail with every bit of life and breath and strength that you have because in real life there are no do-overs. These two officers seemed to give up before the fight ever even began.

Some pacifist sissy whiners will undoubtedly point to the fact that since neither officer was killed, then their actions were appropriate. To that I retort with an emphatic, “Bullshit!” Those officers had no idea how that situation was going to turn out, yet they laid their own lives in the hands of Evil and rolled the dice without so much as a whimper of resistance. We can all infer from Evil’s statement that had the second officer been of any race other than Evil’s, he would have been dead right there.

There is no place in police work for the frame of mind those two officers had. Not everyone is cut out for police work. On the contrary, very few people are ideally suited for it. I am thankful that both officers realized that they had made a mistake in their chosen careers and decided to move on. I bear them no bad feelings. It is not their fault that they are the way that they are.