Officer-Involved Shootings

You’ve seen it in the movies and on television; you’ve read about it in numerous crime novels. A cop mistakenly kills a suspect he or she thought was armed. It’s a cop’s worse nightmare. Then, to cover their mistake, the cop plants a throw-down gun on or near the suspect.

Officer Jason Andersen, a Minneapolis police officer, is facing a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that he deliberately planted a gun on 19 year-old Fong Lee after fatally shooting him eight times in July of 2006 during a foot pursuit. Andersen claimed Lee was evading him and was waving a gun while not stopping for over a block while the officer chased him after interrupting a drug deal. While eight shots into the victim seems excessive considering Lee never got off a shot with the gun he was carrying, a grand jury cleared Andersen of any criminal wrongdoing and the department’s IA division found he didn’t violate any procedures. Andersen was awarded the Medal of Valor for bravery.

However, evidence filed in a wrongful death lawsuit last Monday by the victim’s family alleges that the gun found two feet from Lee’s body had been in police possession for nearly two years before the shooting. The suit claims that contradictory police reports, all eyewitness accounts and a security tape from the elementary school near the playground where the shooting occurred, prove that Lee wasn’t carrying a gun.

Six days after Lee was killed, the Russian-made .380 gun that was recovered near his body was identified as the same gun that was found in a snowbank two years earlier after it was reported stolen during a burglary in North Minneapolis. The gun was never returned to the owner after the trial of the accused burglars. In the initial report after the Lee shooting, the serial number on the gun found near Lee’s body and the serial number on the gun found after the burglary were deemed a match. But another report dated several days later, claimed the gun recovered from the snowbank after the burglary was actually a FNH pistol with a different serial number. Police allege that the pistol was never removed from the property room and never returned to the owner.

Rich Hechter, the Lee family attorney, says in court documents that the planted gun was taken from the evidence room at the 4^th precinct, the same station officer Andersen worked out of. Experts Hechter hired, say the video shows Lee was not carrying a gun during the chase. Police claim the videotape appears to depict Lee carrying something in his hand.

I could clearly see the gun and shadow of the gun in Officer Andersen’s hand in the videotape. I certainly couldn’t see anything in Lee’s hand. I would hope that if this case goes to trial that the videotape could be enhanced to truly judge if Fong Lee was carrying a gun.

You can watch the videotape and judge for yourself by following the link:

http://www.startribune.com/local/42292347.html

Extensive research has found that people rarely are capable of total and perfect recall of events. In high stress situations, such as officer-involved shootings, memory and recall become even more tenuous.

Independent studies conducted by Alexis Artwohl and others found that 52% of officers involved in shootings reported memory loss for part of the event and 46% reported memory loss for some of their own behavior. 39% reported disassociation or a sense of detachment or unreality. 21% noted memory distortion, i.e., they saw heard or experienced something that did not really happen or it happened very differently than they remembered. 22% reported experiencing memory loss after the shooting.

Artwohl also found that officers experienced perceptual distortions. 62% of officers involved in shootings viewed the incident in slow motion, while 17% reported that time slowed down. 84% noted that sounds diminished, while 16% thought that sounds intensified. 79% had tunnel vision, whereas 71% experienced heightened clarity.

She concluded that if a police officer’s recollection of an event is not a totally accurate representation of reality, it does not necessarily mean that the officer is lying or trying to engage in a cover-up. Her conclusion applies to eyewitnesses and suspects as well. No one should accuse an individual of lying simply due to inaccurate, inconsistent or missing memories.

Her research may be of little help or consolation to the family and friends of Sean Bell, the 23-year-old New York City man who died in a hail of bullets fired by three police officers in the early morning hours of November 25th, 2006. But Artwohl’s research can explain the conflicting testimony of police officers, eyewitnesses and the two survivors of the shooting who testified during the trial that concluded last Friday.

And it can also help explain how Detective Michael Oliver, Detective Gescard F. Isnora, and Detective Marc Cooper could fire 50 shots at unarmed men. According to published reports, each of the three detectives charged in the shooting believed that he was the only officer who was shooting and was fearful of return fire. Detective Oliver testified that had no idea Detective Isnora was shooting right beside him, and vice versa.