Now you know why police all over America are killing unarmed citizens and are not being criminally charged for it. This was a real epiphany for me, and I know that when the general American population finds out about it, they are going to join me in considering the police a foreboding and dangerous threat, rather than the social asset and protectors we would prefer to see them as.
As it stands right now, your son, your daughter, your husband or your wife
are just one furtive move away from instant death.
Carl F. Worden
Doc,
I am a former deputy. My son is a police officer. Most of the
friends I associate with locally are current law enforcement officers or
security experts.
Until recently, I was a back up instructor at the Indiana Law Enforcement
Academy (ILEA). My specialty was in teaching officers how to deal with
verbally violent subjects, and how to control non violent physical resistors and
non violent persons who just simply refuse to cooperate.
Yes there is a difference in a verbally violent loud mouth and a resistor
that can do bodily harm. Most officers do not know the difference and are
ready, if not willing to shoot all resistors.
One of the main topics I point out is that ALL police officers are the first
protectors of the Constitution, and should learn to respect a persons rights and
not allow the incident to become a personal issue. I have frilled into my
son, that he should ALWAYS find a reason not to arrest FIRST, and only take
someone into custody if they are a dire threat to the public.
I worked for 11 years in Marion County as a deputy in traffic. I was given
the Governors award for the most drunk driving arrests resulting in convictions
in 1984. 97.4 % plead guilty. Which means they knew they were far to
intoxicated to operate a vehicle. And yet never was my life threatened.
In 1984, I arrested nearly 500 drunk drivers. I am only 5'10" and
150lbs. Most drunks would feel that they could destroy me in seconds, and
yet, I doubt if even 3 or 4 ever tried in 11 years.
It was that record that was important to ILEA. Important enough to ask me
to teach others how I did it.
There was no big secret. I treated EVERYONE with respect. I ALWAYS
tried other avenues before arresting them. I worked hard to get a thank
you from them when I did. I relied on my training to keep me out of harms
way. Training that kept me out of a position to have to pull my gun for
protection.
In today's world, it is very easy to cause a person to become a resistor,
verbally or physically. An officers attitude usually creates the problem.
And a person that appears angry appears to want a confrontation, and any
threatening move may be justification to use deadly force.
It will always be that way from now on until the police learn the basic rules
and laws of their oath. They are the protectors of the citizens and are
obligated to serve them. Something that seems to have been lost in the
last 20 to 30 years. In my opinion, a professional police officer seldom
needs to resort to the actions of using deadly force. And yet, daily we
observe them using it at the beginning of an encounter. I have tried to
teach officers that they can control a person and not let it escalate to a
serious point. I did it at my size. And my secret was being polite
and respectful to all.
Did you know that police are trained on what to do if they have a borderline
shooting? There are several steps that an officer takes in all shootings
(assuming they are trained and not merely special deputies or reserves who
generally are not certified), that can make a bad shooting a justified shooting.
The basic points are;
1) To claim a threatening move
2) To claim that you were instantly in fear of your life
3) To claim that the suspect became disorderly and uncooperative
4) His threatening move continued in a manner that created fear within you after
loud verbal commands to cease his actions (freeze).
5) You shoot ONLY to center body mass until the threat is no longer a threat.
The words in court that are used here is that I shot to stop him, NOT to kill
him.
6) Within seconds, disarm the person. And do whatever you can to save him.
Pretty important if you are alone and your back up responds after a shooting.
In court your back up can state that when they arrived on the scene, they
witnessed that you were attempting to save the persons life. pretty hard to show
that you intended to kill him, when you are trying to save him knowing that he
could testify against you in court. The theory is, if he dies, he can't
testify. If he lives, you can't be charged with killing him.
To sum it up ~ I was there just asking a few questions. Mr. So and So
became belligerent and refused to calm down. I asked him to turn around
and put his hands on the car in an attempt to have him in a controlled position
that would not be a threat to me. Mr. So and So became verbally violent
and made slurred statements that indicated that he intended to do bodily harm or
was about to use deadly force against me. After repeated commands using a loud
tone in my voice to over come his, I asked him again to turn around and place
his hands on the vehicle. He responded with an appearance of hate in his
facial expressions that lead me to believe that he was about to advance his
anger on me.
I attempted again to politely ask him to turn around and place his hands on the
vehicle. I even used the word 'please' each and every time.
At that time, oh my God, it all happened so fast. Mr. So and So raced his
right hand to his back in an area that many people conceal a weapon, and at the
same time lunged forward at me in a violent manner screaming so loudly, I
couldn't understand him.
I reached for my weapon, and issued further commands as I was trained to do in
an attempt to stop his actions. All I could think about was my wife and
children and how my love for my country to dedicate my life to protecting the
great citizens here in our city was about to leave my children without a father.
Oh God, how awful it was. I just couldn't understand why he wanted to hurt
me. I was only doing my job.
Eventually, I was forced beyond my own fears to survive and used my weapon to
stop his actions against me. I shot until I noticed that he no longer was
a threat.
It was then that I noticed he really had no weapon. (Insert heavy tears
and talk about not knowing if you could ever work as a police officer again or
carry a gun).
I am going to forward your article on to as many police officers as I can,
including my son. It is truly a sad world when our police are the
aggressors and use the law and words (lies) above to kill as in your article
from Carl.
There are a few professional police officers out there, but very few. I
know.
Your friend,
Steven
THE FURTIVE MOVE: A COP'S LICENSE TO KILL
Ladies & gentlemen:
Well it happened again right here in sleepy Southern Oregon, only this time
without deadly results.
It seems three Hispanic men picked the wrong guy to mess with in a traffic
confrontation. The wrong guy was Jackson County Narcotics Enforcement
Taskforce commander and Sheriff's Lt. Jim Andersen, who was driving home in his
unmarked police vehicle on April 2 when the incident occurred.
To make this tale short and to the point, the two vehicles stopped at an
intersection in Medford, Oregon. Jorge Cisneros got out of his pickup
truck, walked over to the passenger side of Andersen's unmarked vehicle and
dumped a Chinese food container through the open window and onto the front
passenger seat. Andersen responded by pulling his handgun and firing a
shot at Cisneros which missed, and hit the side of a private home downrange.
It's a good thing there were no pedestrians out and about that might have
interfered with the bullet's path.
Yesterday, our district attorney Mark Huddleston convened a Grand Jury to hear
the case, and it took this particular Grand Jury only 5 minutes to decide the
cop had every right to shoot at someone who dumps a take-out Chinese food
container in his car. In two previous cases I reported where unarmed
citizens were shot to death by police, the Grand Jury in each case took about 15
minutes to decide the police were justified in killing completely unarmed
citizens, but in this case they showed no such indecision
Since this was the third such incident in recent memory where local cops used
lethal force against unarmed citizens and got off Scot-free, I just had to drop
a dime to the United States Justice Department in Washington D.C. to find out
what was going on. I called (202) 514-3204 and spoke to Justice Department
Criminal Legal Specialist Kevin Callahan about the three cases, but I mainly
focused on this most recent case involving the illegal littering by Jorge
Cisneros and the death sentence he nearly received for it. Mostly, I
wanted to know if the exact same thing happened to me, and if I shot at a Jorge
Cisneros for the same reason, would I get the same 5- minute Grand Jury
treatment -- or the chair?
Back when I worked closely with police departments all over the United States,
the policy for using lethal force required that a weapon be seen and that the
person wielding it appeared intent on using it to seriously injure or kill the
police officer or another innocent person. But according to Kevin
Callahan, all that has changed and cops no longer need to carry an unregistered
back-up weapon to plant on the body if they make a boo-boo. Bear in mind,
Callahan didn't actually say that, but the apparent change in policy he
described said it all in just two words:
Furtive Move.
Yessiree, you don't need to have and hold a weapon anymore to get your butt shot
off by a police officer. No sir, all you have to do now is make a
"furtive move" that causes the police officer to "perceive"
that you have a weapon and you plan to use it. With that perception and
your furtive move, the police officer is trained to aim his pistol at your
center mass and keep shooting until the magazine is empty or until you are no
longer able to keep moving furtively.
Remember Amadou Diallo, the guy who was perforated by New York's finest when he
stood in a darkened doorway offering his wallet? Yep, he shouldn't have
made that furtive move. It was all his fault, and the police were found
innocent.
Remember that young lady who was snoozing in her car down L.A. way when she was
startled by police officers who perceived she'd made a furtive move and blew her
away? Yep, that was her fault too.
When our own two fatal police shootings of unarmed citizens occurred here in
Southern Oregon, both involved victims who made furtive moves just before the
cops killed them, but in one case the cops' actions channeled the victim into
making his own furtive move. Specifically, Cole Younger Smith was tucked away in
his pickup truck and surrounded by police officers from something like 3 or 4
different and uncoordinated police agencies. He had stopped at the State
Police facility in Central Point, Oregon to ask for help, saying he wanted to
kill himself and wouldn't exit his truck
The cops were getting tired of waiting for Smith to surrender himself, and the
donut shops were closing, so they decided to speed things along by dropping a
flash-bang device in the back of Smith's pickup truck. I had never heard
of that technique before -- you know, how to calm down a very agitated and
mentally disturbed person with a blinding flash and an explosion? I didn't
know explosives going off just behind your seat would have such a calming
effect, but then, these local cops are such kidders. Needless to say,
Smith perceived that the cops were trying to kill him rather than calm him, so
he drove at low speed as far as the police barricade would allow, jumped out of
his truck to run away while furtively holding a shaving case in his hand, and
was shot 21-23 times for his trouble.
Okay, time to get real here. We American citizens cannot tolerate police
officers in our midst who are trained like attack dogs to empty their magazines
into our center masses the moment they perceive we've made a furtive move.
This is unacceptable policy, and at one point in our history, such a policy
would have been declared unconstitutional. I don't know how this lethal
force policy ever came to be observed as a rule of law, but it is clear our
local police agencies in Southern Oregon are training and killing by it, knowing
the United States Justice Department will back them every time.
Finally, a word about the Grand Jury system. According to Mr. Callahan,
the only thing expected of Grand Jurors is that they obey their oath to keep the
Grand Jury proceedings secret. On Saturday, April 13th, I witnessed a
member of the current Grand Jury at a gathering where he was asking opinions and
giving them about this instant case where Lt. Andersen shot at Jorge Cisneros
for his littering violation -- the case he'd be deliberating in secret Grand
Jury proceedings held yesterday, April 18th. The same Grand Jury that came
back in 5 minutes and said Andersen's shooting was justified.
It is apparently quite legal for a Grand Juror to do that, up to and including
allowing a cop friend to tell him Jorge Cisneros and his friends are known
scumbags, or bad actors or dirtbags -- I can't remember the exact term used.
It wasn't nice. If Grand Jury members are that easy to get to and
influence prior to a scheduled Grand Jury proceeding on a well-publicized case,
and if it's perfectly legal for a Grand Juror to discuss a matter and ask
opinions he will be deliberating later while on Grand Jury duty, then the Grand
Jury system also needs to be fixed.
Now you know why police all over America are killing unarmed citizens and are
not being criminally charged for it. This was a real epiphany for me, and
I know that when the general American population finds out about it, they are
going to join me in considering the police a foreboding and dangerous threat,
rather than the social asset and protectors we would prefer to see them as.
As it stands right now, your son, your daughter, your husband or your wife are
just one furtive move away from instant death.
Carl F. Worden