Nomination for Hero Badge

frankenstein_villagers torches and pitchforks

San Antonio Police, No Confidence Vote Against ChiefThe San Antonio Police Officer’s Association (SAPOA) held the vote and reported 97% no confidence in the Chief. This is the second time around for McManus. He has retired once from the Chief’s position and after an exhaustive year long search was rehired by the City.

In my discussions with SAPD officers, they weren’t wild about McManus, for or against.  A frequent criticism was that he had never met a TV camera he didn’t like.  He could be vindictive, once spending over a million dollars with appeals all the way to the State Supreme Court in an unsuccessful effort  to fire a subordinate.

On his most recent foray back to the Chief’s position, before his skinny ass had worn a groove in his new executive chair, he was confronted with an officer involved shootingPolice shootings are investigated by two entities, in this area.  One investigation is conducted by the, in this case, San Antonio Police Department and the second by a unit controlled by the Bexar County District Attorney.  The District Attorney is concerned with identifying “criminal conduct” while the SAPD is interested in violations of rule or policy.  The investigations typically run parallel and are independent of one another. More often than not, findings are released in conjunction with one another.

This time however, the San Antonio Police Chief Announces Intent to fire Officer.  The shooting happened on February 4, 2016, McManus initiated his action on March 1, 2016. McManus claimed that the officer had violated SAPD policy by intentionally exposing himself to danger and that his actions are inconsistent with the standards endorsed by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). McManus has since backed away from he firing decision and is recommending retraining.  The District Attorney has not concluded his investigation.

Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) has recently put out a report critical of police training regarding the use of force.  I have included the report at the link.  I urge you to take a look at it. The span of one good bowel movement ought to tell you everything you need to know. 

PERF is fixated on the 21 foot rule.  Ten speakers devoted time in their presentations to the 21 foot rule, described as follows: The “21-foot rule”: As detailed on pp. 14–15 of this report, the so-called 21-foot rule was created in a 1983 magazine article to describe the distance an officer must keep from a suspect armed with a knife, in order to give the officer enough time to draw and fire his gun if the suspect suddenly charges him with the knife. The 21-foot rule was later incorporated in a training video for police produced by an organization called Calibre Press.

I have taught Officer Survival for over thirty years and I began teaching it well before 1983.  I have discussed the 21 Foot Rule, it takes five minutes of lecture and you are done. Need to re-enforce the concept to the hard heads, add two minutes for demonstration during defensive tactics, still not convinced let me have six rounds on the range. There are so many other aspects of officer survival that need more attention and time than the 21 Foot Rule.  I think I know why PERF concentrated upon it.

There was a TV show called “Justified”.  It was about a trigger happy Deputy United States Marshal named Rayland Gibbons.  In the next to last season, Deputy Gibbons was dealing with a family of “Florida Crackers” if you think that is disparaging, you would be right.  One of this brood of felons has a fondness for knives and once during every episode for the whole season explains how a man with a knife can beat a man with a gun.  In the final episode, or thereabouts, our psycho with the knife squares off against Gibbons and Gibbons ain’t backing down. The psycho gives his speech and Gibbons tells him, do what you gotta do.  The psycho let’s out a shriek, raises his knife, charges, trips, falls on the same knife and dies.  SPOILER ALERT, not about the show, get over it that’s TV.  We’re talking public policy here, millions of dollars in pay checks collected by PERF members and all they know about Officer Survival, they learned on cable TV.

Before you tackle the PERF report keep these things in mind. (1) Policy and Procedure is intended to be a guide to decision making, it was never intended to cover every eventuality. A reasonable person who applied the concepts outlined could arrive at the correct decision.  (2) A Policy and Procedure document that offers no guidance,  but sets traps for the unwary is worse than having no policy at all.

Pretend that the PERF report is your only guide to using force, including deadly force.  Is it a guide? Does it provide instruction or is it a sweeping manifesto of generalities with no route to the desired end point? As a guide are the best interests of the police department, individual officer or society being served?  Would you want to work for any of the Chiefs that signed off on this steaming manifesto?

The PERF product is useless for working police officers but serves the purposes of policy wonks and mid-mangers safely ensconced behind triple layer security in the bowels of police headquarters. It is not a policy document and certainly not a policy document of the San Antonio Police Department.  It takes more than McManus saying, “ain’t this cool” to become a rule, policy or procedure.

I am no a big fan of unions, police unions especially.  I thought as a working police officer it was my job to fight criminal activity, not pay dues to it.  That being said, I  think SAPOA got it right.

Hopefully, McManus’s has learned from this that the 21 foot rule is not interior design tip. As in, “How far does a visitor have to walk from the door to your desk, in order to realize he/she is a supplicant?” Answer, 21 feet.