Use of force: ‘It’s a split-second decision’

RUSSELLVILLE –Before each shift at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, supervisors will always talk about officer safety.

They talk about incidents throughout the state and across the country.

They talk about those incidents because Sheriff Shannon Oliver has yet to have a fatal officer-involved shooting within the county since he’s been in office.

“We’ve been fortunate enough … and I pray it keeps going that way,” he said.

Officer-involved shootings statewide could possibly close out the year below last year’s total, which was 43.

AsofFriday,theAlabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) and the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) have worked 37 officer- involved shootings.

That number was at 33 two weeks ago until ALEA was called to investigate three officer-involved shootings across the state (Chambers, Pike and Marshall counties) within a 24-hour period. Two of the three suspects in the shootings were killed following an exchange of gunfire.

Another officer-involved shooting took place on Nov. 28 in Birmingham, which ended with the fatal shooting of the suspect who was armed with a weapon.

Northwest Alabama has not been void of officer involved shootings this year.

The first of in our area happened in the parking lot of the Florence Police Department on Jan. 15.

The suspect, Jackson Paul Jones, called 911 that afternoon stating he was at the police department and was “about to shoot the place up.”

When officers located Jones in the parking lot, he exited his vehicle armed with a handgun and began firing shots. Officers returned fire and killed Jones.

Two months later, police were involved in another shootout following a bank robbery on Cox Creek Parkway on March 25.

“While attempting to steal another vehicle, Louis Michael Hill presented a firearm and fired at law enforcement officers,” an ALEA release stated. “Officers returned fire, fatally wounding Hill.” Violent calls

The National Police Foundation in 2019 published a study looking at officer involved shootings and found that violent calls accounted for 43% of the shootings. Those type calls included an armed person, homicide, assault, shots fired and robbery.

Those calls resulted in an increase in the rate of rounds fired by 49%, according to the study.

Calls classified as “other” included mental illness, suicide, trespassing, disorderly conduct, drug and sex offenses accounted for 31% of the shootings. Traffic stops accounted for 8.8% of the shootings, while domestic disturbance calls accounted for 6%.

“The type of people we deal with day to day is different from one call to the next,” Russellville Police Chief Chris Hargett said. “I don’t know that there is a key component that leads people to shootings.

“Back when I started in law enforcement if you told someone to do something, they did it – no questions asked. Today, some people will push [law enforcement] as far as they can.”

The National Police Foundation also concluded that dispatchers play an important role in officer safety “through the information they provide when dispatching a call.”

Hargett agreed. “That goes back to the dispatcher doing their job and sometimes going above and beyond to get and provide an officer with as much information as possible,” he said.

Training

All law enforcement officials interviewed said training involving the use of lethal force is done several times throughout the year.

Much of the training for the officers is mental, Oliver said.

“It’s a mental preparation whether you should or shouldn’t fire your weapon,” he said. “It’s something none of us want to do, or even think about doing, but I want my guys to be as prepared mentally as they are physically.”

At least twice a year Lauderdale County Sheriff Joe Hamilton’s deputies and officers take part in scenario-based training using guns with simulated non-lethal rounds.

“We put our people through various scenariobased training to try to make them aware of what they could possibly encounter in the field, and, yes, that includes use of force,” Hamilton said.

While sheriff’s deputies in Lauderdale County use training guns and nonlethal simulator rounds, they also have made use of the Firearms Training Systems (FATS), which are virtual and hybrid training simulators. The systems allow law enforcement to practice judgmental use-offorce scenarios.

“We do a lot of FATS training and run through scenarios of shoot or no shoot,” Colbert County Sheriff Eric Balentine said. “We also do drills at the range. This training is something that you get as soon as you are in the [police] academy. You continue to train in various methods year to year.”

Eric Nelson, Florence deputy chief of Police Investigations and Logistics, said there are daily discussions with officers regarding use of force.

“In addition to those discussions, our supervisors will show videos of other cases that have made it out on the internet. We talk about what was done and what could be done differently in those certain situations.”

To shoot or not

Balentine said making the call to shoot or not varies because no situation is the same.

“You may go out on what you think may be a routine call, and then that simple call turns into something else,” he said. “I will say this, if you point a firearm at a law enforcement officer, you may be shot.”

Balentine’s best advice to any law enforcement officer is to “fall back on your training.”

“Over the years, I’ve been involved in some shootings,” he said. “All you can do is be prepared the best that you can. It’s a split-second decision, and you’ll be ridiculed one way or another.”