Nomination for Hero Badge

This is gonna take some explaining, police-officer-fired-for-not-shooting-man.  West Virginia officer Stephen Mader said even though he didn’t know Williams Jr.’s gun was unloaded at the time, the man had the gun at his side and was not pointing it at the officer. He also knew that he had been called to the scene because of a domestic disturbance and Williams Jr. had only threatened to hurt himself. Officer Mader felt that he was dealing with a “suicide by cop situation”. He may well have been right, but that does not negate his responsibility to utilize proper tactics to address the situation. The article is silent but at minimum Mader had a responsibility to:

(1)Seek and maintain cover while exploring additional options.(2) Prepare to use deadly force on his own behalf or in defense of a third party.  (3) It doesn’t sound like Mader considered the possibility that confronted with one dead cop (Mader) at the scene, back up officers would have had more incentive to use deadly force, just as Mr. Williams desired. (3) Mader had an obligation to establish lines of communication with his backup.

Back up officers responding managed to flank the suspect and one of the officers perceiving a very real threat to Mader,shot and killed Williams.  The shooting was ruled justified.

There are two other factors in play here.  One mentioned in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and one not touched upon. Had this been a coordinated response between Mader and his backup, Mader’s approach may have been justified. There is no evidence that this was so. The backup saw an officer unprepared to defend himself in danger and took appropriate action.

In Pittsburgh Post Gazette article, Weirton-fired-officerindications are Mader was a Probationary employee and subject to termination at anytime during his probationary period.  

To make matters worse is the Chief of Police in Weirton has to do only two things to be successful in his job. One is the ability to drink coffee without dribbling on himself.  The second is to be able to fire a Probationary Officer without screwing it up.  Unfortunately, the number of tasks was too great and Chief is only batting .500.

This isn’t so much controversial as messy and for that the Police Department has only itself to blame. It would have been accurate and simpler to point out that the terminated officer used inappropriate tactics in dealing with the situation, rather than he didn’t shoot quick enough. Police shootings are time critical and it was probably not a good idea to assign the investigation to an investigator at the beginning of his one week vacation. It’s the little things.