Breaking Rank (51 page)

“Hi.”

“Are you okay? You sound funny.”

“I'm fine. I just wanted you to be aware of something. It'll be on the news tonight.”

“What?”

“I shot a man.”

“Oh, Norm. Is he . . . did you . . . is he . . . dead?”

“Yes.”

I finish the report and walk it over to Sanders in Homicide. Then I call Patricia back. “Let's go have pizza, okay?”

“Pizza?”

“Yeah, Venice.” Our favorite pizza joint, Thirty-third and El Cajon, just a few blocks from the shooting.

“Are you sure you . . .”

“Yeah, I'm sure. But I don't want to talk about it, okay? I need to do something normal.” I pick Patricia up at our new home in Tierrasanta. At Venice we split a No. 3 with pepperoni and mushrooms and talk about Nixon and Vietnam and the hopelessness of McGovern's campaign.

Four years after the shooting, Father's Day. My ten-year-old son is with us for the weekend. We're shooting hoops in the backyard. Matt wants to know why I always stare off into the canyon, why I'm always quiet, or mad at him, on Father's Day.

Ten years after the shooting, divorced from Patricia, I'm dating a defense attorney in Santa Monica. We have an argument in her apartment. I walk to the beach, take my shoes off, and start running as fast as my legs and lungs permit, on the undulating dry sand. Off in the distance, rippling through waves of heat, I see the back of Carberry's auburn head. A second later it blows up, brains and blood exploding everywhere. Someone or something jerks my legs out from under me. I crash to the sand, and can't get back up. I can't catch a breath. I don't know what to do. I'm embarrassed.

Thirteen years after the shooting, I'm sitting on a sofa, talking to a shrink. Under orders. Lisa, the new woman in my life has issued an ultimatum: Get help, or get lost. I don't understand. I'm fine. I'm happy. I'm not nuts. But I love her, so here I am. The shrink wants me to talk about the shooting. No problem. I've told the story, several times. To recruits, so they can learn about tactics. To citizen groups, so they can understand more about DV. But this is different. I relive that September afternoon. It hits me that I've never spoken to anyone about the
feelings.
That's because, until this moment, on this couch, I hadn't realized I had feelings about it. I cry, tears rolling down my face. I start shaking, and can't stop.

It's better today. In the era of my shooting, police administrators were clueless. Nobody thought to replace the cop's firearm, sometimes for days. When the significance of that oversight dawned on police officials—a cop without a gun is like a CPA without a calculator—they adopted a policy of
immediately replacing the firearm. Someone, I don't remember who, had loaned me a .38 the day after. I'd thanked him.

In the early seventies a cop who shot and killed someone was often subject to the worst possible response from his colleagues: praise. Not for his actions or his decision making or even the result but for the shooting act itself. We didn't know any better. We didn't have peer counseling or psychological services. We didn't know that a cop involved in a shooting, particularly one that ends in death, is a different person after he or she has pulled the trigger.

“Nice shooting, Lieutenant,” said a patrolman who'd been giving me the cold shoulder ever since I'd gone public with my beefs about our business. “Guess I was wrong about you.”
Nice shooting?
How could I have missed?
Wrong about me?
You asshole. You think I feel good about killing a man? But his was a common reaction around the station house. People who'd never done it saying “you done good,” patting you on the back, like you'd scored the game-winning TD.

Almost as bad were those who acted like it hadn't happened. When O'Brien offered up the keys to the chief's office, it was the first and last thing he said to me about the shooting. Ever.

A cop who's involved in a killing (or any other traumatic event) needs to be handled with care—for his or her own well-being as well as the future safety of the community. The shooter must be taken off the streets, of course. (Permanently, if the incident is a terminable offense; manslaughter comes to mind, as does murder. Also terminable? A shooting that reflects a cop's incurable fear or impulsiveness or indecisiveness.) The officer should be given a desk job long enough for the investigation to establish the facts, and to determine whether the cop is fit for duty. How to make that determination? A session on the couch.

At the time of my shooting there was no requirement or expectation that cops involved in fatal shootings see a psychologist or psychiatrist. The only expectation was that you'd be back at work the next day, presumably with a borrowed gun. At the time that was fine with me: I didn't want my colleagues thinking I'd been
traumatized
by the event, for chrissakes.

In subsequent years, officers involved in fatal shootings were offered the
option
of seeing, at company expense, a psychologist or psychiatrist. But the
problem with noncompulsory visits was that they tended, in our macho culture, to stigmatize those who elected to “talk it out,” to get help for their flashbacks, their night sweats, their feelings of guilt (even in unassailably justified shootings). In time, we figured out that the best policy was to
mandate
psychological fitness-for-duty appraisals, conducted by competent professionals who are familiar with the police culture (and, of course, with the short-and long-term emotional effects of the use of lethal force). If everyone goes, no one gets stigmatized.

Even more helpful today is the assistance of “peer support” officers. We didn't pioneer it in San Diego, but SDPD was one of the first to recruit volunteer cops who'd been involved in fatal or serious-injury shootings. We gave these officers intensive training in “peer counseling” and made them available to every cop who shot someone. The counselors were on call, just like Homicide and IA and deputy district attorneys and a union rep, available to roll to the scene on a moment's notice. These cops had been there. They knew what to say and do—and what
not
to say and do. They knew how to help their fellow officers understand things about the shooting incident: department policies and procedures, the roles and responsibilities of Homicide, the DA, Internal Affairs, and what the shooter could reasonably expect from the department in the weeks and months ahead. Most important, they understood how the incident could affect officers psychologically, both in the moment and in the future.

There are two critical accountability concerns about officers involved in fatal shootings who are allowed to return to the streets. First, will the officer be
trigger happy
, too quick to resort to fatal force when “less lethal” means are available and appropriate? Second, will he or she hesitate to pull the trigger again, in a situation that demands it? In either case, the lives of both citizens and police officers hang in the balance.

EPILOGUE

Three months before I moved to Seattle I got on the elevator at SDPD headquarters and punched seven. The car stopped at the fifth floor and a DV detective got on. “Ah, Chief. I was just on my way up to see you. Got a minute?”

“You bet. What's up?”

We were alone but he said, “I'd rather wait till we get to your office.”

“Okay.” He had an incident report in his hand.
Shit
, I thought, a cop. One of our officers has gone and beaten up his spouse or girlfriend. We got off the elevator and walked into my office. The detective handed me the report. I looked at the name on it. My blood turned cold.

San Diego police officers had the night before been called to the 805 bridge over Interstate 8. A man was lying between the concrete abutment and the guardrail, threatening to jump. The California Highway Patrol had closed two southbound lanes, as well as the ramp below. Negotiators talked with the despondent man for an hour, before convincing him to surrender. In his hand he clutched a small photograph of his two-year-old daughter. His girlfriend, the child's mother, had just broken up with him after he'd beaten and threatened to kill her. On the way to County Mental Health, Joseph Alan Carberry blamed his problems on his mother, his girlfriend, and the police officer who'd shot his father twenty-one years earlier. He told the arresting officers he was going to track down and kill that cop.