Rbedard

By DAPHNE DURET

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 10:50 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011

Posted: 9:43 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011

 

WEST PALM BEACH — In 2009, while newly elected State Attorney Michael McAuliffe was still building a reputation for cracking down on public corruption, his office charged two former West Palm Beach police officers with battery and official misconduct in the beating of a handcuffed robbery suspect captured on video.

Prosecutors actively pursued the case until September, when they dropped all charges against one officer and allowed another to plead to a misdemeanor. The move prompted speculation that McAuliffe dropped the case to garner favor with the local police union for his upcoming re-­election bid. Three weeks later, a retired police officer filed an ethics complaint with the Florida Commission on Ethics against McAuliffe, citing a meeting between him and union officials shortly before the case ended as evidence.

McAuliffe and prosecutors in the case deny the allegations. At the time the charges were dropped, they attributed the decision largely to an enhanced version of the police video a defense attorney played for them in early September . They say it shows that the suspect provoked the officers’ attack. But a copy of the new DVD obtained by The Palm Beach Post and reviewed by four experts shows no discernible difference from the previous enhancement that prosecutors have had since early 2010.

Dr. George Kirkham, whom prosecutors once planned to use as an expert witness in the case, watched both the 2010 video and the new enhancement but said he saw no difference between the two. Neither did three other experts The Palm Beach Post asked to review the video.

“I don’t know what they saw, but there’s no difference here to me,” Kirkham said. “It’s unfortunate this case ended the way it did.”

But McAuliffe last week said he felt as confident as ever that he and prosecutors in the case made the right decision. McAuliffe said union officials did ask him to look at the case again, but he and other prosecutors began considering dropping the charges only because parts of the case had begun to unravel.

And though he and prosecutors cited the defense video when they dropped the charges, McAuliffe said the enhancements became important only when he viewed them in light of the case’s other problems.

“As inartful as the process became, the process was correct,” McAuliffe said.

Violent encounter

The May 2008 recording shows the end of the encounter between former officers Louis Schwartz and Kurt Graham with Pablo Valenzuela outside a West Palm Beach CVS pharmacy Valenzuela had just robbed of prescription pills. Valenzuela had attacked Schwartz with pepper spray in an attempt to get away. The recording begins when the officers stop Valenzuela in the parking lot, guns drawn.

Valenzuela in the video appears to respond to the officers’ commands to lie down and spread his arms. Graham then steps in, handcuffs Valenzuela and appears to place his right knee between Valenzuela’s shoulder blades to keep him down. The footage shows Schwartz as he walks up, then shows him looking at Valenzuela while Graham delivers a punch to his head. Schwartz then immediately kicks Valenzuela in his side, and ­Graham delivers a final kick to Valenzuela’s head that lifts his body off the ground.

The officers, explaining why they had used force, said Valenzuela had tried to bite Graham .

Schwartz’s attorney, Doug Duncan, said that he and Graham’s attorney, Michael Salnick, would have used the alleged bite as a defense if the case had gone to trial. Duncan presented the latest enhancement to McAuliffe, Chief Assistant State Attorney Paul Zacks and prosecutor Danielle Croke in a Sept. 8 meeting.

Croke, who wrote a memo detailing the reasons the charges were dropped Sept. 21, said in it that although prosecutors previously did not believe Valenzuela did anything to trigger the attack, she now thought a “reasonable fact finder” would likely agree with the defense’s version of events.

But Kirkham, along with a West Palm Beach police sergeant interviewed during the department’s internal affairs investigation into the incident, finds the theory implausible. In fact, Kirkham said he told prosecutors in his report that he believed that Valenzuela’s head was actually turned away from Graham at the time the attack began, a theory Valenzuela corroborated in his interview with internal affairs investigators.

Prosecutors ultimately decided not to use Kirkham on the case and found another expert several months before the case ended, but Kirkham said he had no idea he had been replaced until a Post reporter told him two weeks ago.

Richard Lichten, a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s lieutenant who has investigated more than 1,800 use-of-force cases as an expert, also viewed both enhancements and saw no marked difference. Lichten said even if Valenzuela tried to bite Graham, the proper response would have been to back away.

“That’s not to say that there haven’t been cases where handcuffed suspects haven’t harmed or even killed officers,” Lichten said. “But in this case that (backing away) would have been the appropriate thing to do.”

Prosecutors dropped all the charges against Schwartz. Graham pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor battery charge for the last kick he made to Valenzuela’s head. He received no jail time but was ordered to pay court costs and attend an anger management course. Graham resigned from the department shortly after the incident, and Schwartz was fired.

Among the problems in the case, McAuliffe said, was that the testimony of the West Palm Beach lieutenant who had been the watch commander on the night of the incident had become increasingly inconsistent over the course of at least two depositions.

Also, while investigators initially reported that Schwartz appeared with Graham on video during a conversation with a supervisor where Graham allegedly made false statements to justify the attack, it was later discovered that Schwartz wasn’t there. Those factors led prosecutors to believe a jury might find Schwartz’s bite defense credible.

McAuliffe offered no timeline on when these issues came to light, but paperwork in the case indicates that those facts had been known to prosecutors for months, at least, before the charges were dropped.

Though they decided that Graham’s final kick to Valenzuela’s head was the only criminal act in the case, McAuliffe said the entire incident was an improper use of force. McAuliffe said his office has prosecuted more than 40 law enforcement officers since 2009.

Zacks said the decision to drop charges was largely one he and Croke made with McAuliffe’s approval. Zacks said he believes the decision was “100 percent the right decision” and said the experts’ opinions are just that.

“Maybe their eyes are better than mine,” he said regarding the enhancements. “I would just say that reasonable minds can disagree on that.”

Croke appeared to be actively pursuing the Schwartz and Graham cases until September, according to internal emails obtained by The Post. Her messages show she was making arrangements for a deposition of Charles Key, the new expert, and she and the defense attorneys had agreed that the week of Dec. 5 would be best for trial.

Croke, who left the state attorney’s office nine days after the charges were dropped, now works in private practice. She said her departure from the office after more than seven years as a prosecutor had nothing to do with the case.

Though Croke cited the enhanced video in her memo explaining why the charges were dropped, prosecutors said they had not kept a copy of the video when The Post requested it. They produced a copy after they and Duncan received letters requesting it from The Post’s attorneys.

In October, retired Riviera Beach police Cmdr. Rick Sessa filed the ethics complaint against McAuliffe. The complaint is unresolved, but McAuliffe says he is confident that it will be dismissed.

Police union’s view

Police Benevolent Association President John Kazanjian confirmed in October that he met with McAuliffe and urged him to drop the charges in what he saw as a flawed case. The meeting was to discuss unrelated law enforcement issues, Kazanjian said, and there was no discussion of a PBA endorsement. The PBA has not made any yet in the upcoming election, Kazanjian said.

Prosecutors say Sessa’s complaint is the result of a vendetta he has against the state attorney’s office based on his personal history with the office . Sessa denies that.

Valenzuela’s personal injury attorney, Rudy Gurrola, declined to comment on the case. No suit has been filed.

Roy Bedard, a Tallahassee-based use-of-force expert who also saw no difference in the videos, called the use of the new enhancement “sleight of hand.”

“Whether or not it was for political gain I wouldn’t speculate, but the tactic that is used by the state attorney’s office is somewhat despicable,” he said. “What’s really happening is that they’re showing you something that is slightly different from what they had but shows nothing you couldn’t see before.”

By Shelley Rossetter and Kameel Stanley, Times Staff Writers

TAMPA — Moments before Hillsborough Deputy Lyonelle De Veaux was shot Friday night, she made a split-second move that may have saved her life.

As bullets headed toward her, De Veaux turned her body, crouched and backed up. She received shots to her upper leg, lower leg and shoulder, deputies said.

She is expected to make a full recovery.

But it could have been much worse, said Larry McKinnon, a spokesman for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

“She did what she was trained to do,” he said. “Practicing and rehearsing different scenarios helps, because then, when something happens, you don’t think, you just react.”

That’s important for officers who must always be on guard.

In 2009, law enforcement agencies reported that 57,268 officers nationwide were assaulted while performing their duties, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. About 26 percent of them were injured.

Sometimes, those assaults turn deadly.

During the past three years, six officers in Tampa Bay have been shot and killed in the line of duty.

And it’s not just happening here.

There has been a wave of police killings across the nation this year, said Roy Bedard, a police consultant in Tallahassee. And thus far, Florida is at the lead of that trend, he said.

Every year, Bedard said, law enforcement officers across the country make millions of contacts with the public.

Most times, they’re dealing with calls many in the public perceive as routine, such as traffic stops and domestic violence situations, like the one De Veaux responded to.

“We know better,” Bedard said. “Those are one of the most dangerous things we can do. … Domestic violence (calls) are very, very tricky, because you have emotion involved.”

Vehicle stops and domestic violence calls are the situations where the most officers are lost, he said, mainly because there are so many of them.

Bedard said officers can do all the tactical training in the world, but it’s always the spontaneous situations — like the one involving De Veaux — that are the most dangerous.

“It is a very, very difficult job,” Bedard said. “It always has been. It continues to be.”

Shelley Rossetter can be reached at srossetter@sptimes.com or (813) 661-2442. Kameel Stanley can be reached at kstanley@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8643.

By Jamal Thalji, Times Staff Writer
Thursday, September 22, 2011

ST. PETERSBURG — Semiautomatic rifles are in the hands of everyone these days, from law-abiding citizens to criminals.

But St. Petersburg has a plan to put even more high-powered rifles in the hands of its police: The city will loan money to officers so they can buy their own.

“You don’t want to be in a situation where someone is shooting at you with a rifle,” said Sgt. Tim Brockman, “and you’re sitting there with a handgun.”

The rifle most commonly used by law enforcement is the AR-15 carbine, a civilian variant of the military’s M4 rifle.

But the weapons are so expensive — they cost up to $1,000 each and need to be modified for the individual user — that many departments give them only to special units, like SWAT teams.

That’s why Tampa Bay’s police agencies have long allowed patrol officers to buy their own.

The problem, according to patrol Sgt. Chris Emmert, was that not every officer could afford the expense of buying and equipping such a weapon. He’s spent $2,500 on his own rifle.

“The younger or newer officers on the low end of the pay scale didn’t have the financial means,” Emmert said, “especially when trying to support their families.”

He said officers long ago came up with a way to make them affordable: interest-free loans. Then, after three officers were killed by gunfire early this year, he pitched the idea to Police Chief Chuck Harmon.

A survey of the rank-and-file found “overwhelming” support, according to police spokesman Bill Proffitt. The deaths of Sgt. Thomas Baitinger, K-9 Officer Jeffrey Yaslowitz and Officer David Crawford also factored into the chief’s decision.

“I think after what happened on Jan. 24 and Feb. 21,” Proffitt said, “there was renewed interest in having a program like that.”

Starting Oct. 6, the city will give officers who signed up an interest-free loan of $1,150. Then it will deduct $45 from their weekly paychecks.

Brockman, the department’s training supervisor, said officers will be allowed to use the carbines only in “high-risk” situations: facing an active shooter, a barricaded suspect, setting up a perimeter, pulling over a dangerous suspect. Officers must also train annually with the weapons.

“If the officers aren’t properly trained,” Brockman said, “then you’ve created a bigger problem for yourself.”

The ultimate goal, according to Emmert, is to have more firepower than your adversary: “If we have two officers responding to a man with a gun call, the hope is that at least one of them has a rifle.

“We don’t want to bring a handgun to a handgun situation. We want to bring a rifle.”

The rifles have better range and more accuracy than a handgun, according to Emmert, a firearms instructor.

The nation’s police agencies learned in 1997 that they can’t always wait for SWAT. That’s when two heavily armed bank robbers outgunned dozens of Los Angeles officers armed with only revolvers, pistols and shotguns.

In the years since, the rifles have become standard issue. When St. Petersburg finally let street officers use their own rifles in 2004, it was one of the last Tampa Bay agencies to do so.

The move was spurred in part by a 2003 St. Petersburg incident: suspects armed with SKS rifles killed a bystander in a drive-by shooting, then fired at pursuing officers.

More recently, high-powered rifles were blamed for one of the city’s worst tragedies. Police said an 8-year-old girl was killed in 2009 when her house was raked by AR-15 rifles.

The St. Petersburg Police Department is poised to undergo even more tactical changes today, proposals that were also spurred by the recent officer casualties.

The City Council will consider whether to spend $511,000 in forfeiture money to buy gun lights, new bullet-resistant vests, thermal imagers and, a first for the city, its own armored vehicle.

St. Petersburg’s police force is catching up with a growing, but not universally accepted, trend across the country.

“There’s been a blend of military and law enforcement philosophy that frightens some people,” said Roy Bedard, a Tallahassee police consultant.

“But I don’t think the public is worried about law enforcement officers. I think they’re worried about the threats law enforcement seems to be facing.”

>>FAST FACTS

Colt AR-15 A3 carbine

Caliber: 5.56mm (.223)

Magazine: 30 rounds (two magazine limit for officers)

Range: 1,968.5 feet

Muzzle velocity: 3,200 feet per second

Barrel length: 16.1 inches

Weight: 7 pounds (without magazine)

Full length: 35 inches (stock extended)

Collapsed length: 32 inches (stock retracted)

ATLANTA (AP) – Hundreds of arrests made by the Atlanta Police Department could be vulnerable to legal challenges, prominent defense attorneys say, after an audit showed dozens of officers lost their arrest powers because they failed to meet state training requirements.

The audit showed at least 51 of Atlanta’s 1,800 or so officers lost their powers of arrest because they failed to complete at least 20 hours of training each year as required by state law. The department wouldn’t release the names of the officers, but the tally could grow as investigators work to finish reviewing 600 remaining files.

“We’re aware of this situation and we’re taking it seriously,” said Atlanta police spokesman Carlos Campos. “We’re moving aggressively and efficiently to fix it.”

The training flaws could jeopardize criminal convictions as well as pending cases, said defense attorney Page Pate. He said attorneys could readily challenge the convictions of suspects they arrested without a warrant by challenging the officer’s training background. And search warrants signed by officers who lost their arrest powers are also vulnerable to legal challenges, he said.

“If we had a client whose house was searched by one of these officers, then you could challenge,” he said. “And if you could throw out a search warrant, especially in drug cases, that usually ends the case.”

Atlanta police administrators realized the problem late last year when a training supervisor noticed that officers coming back from extended leaves often had training issues that needed to be addressed. But it’s unclear why the full extent of the training lapses wasn’t revealed until results of an ongoing audit were released in August.

“Right now we’re really focusing on a fix rather than a post-mortem on how it happened,” said Campos. “The fact is we’re here, and that’s what we need to focus on.”

The department has ordered a quarterly review of all records, and is working to complete the review of the department’s roughly 1,800 officers. Some 26 of the 51 officers were removed from the streets to clear up the training issues, and officials are working with the other 25. Clerical errors in the records of 250 other officers were quickly fixed, Campos said.

Meanwhile, the department’s attorneys are bracing for an onslaught of challenges once the review is complete. However, they say they don’t expect many convictions to be overturned.

“I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as some suggest. We certainly take the position that the arrests will hold up,” Campos said. “But we’re aware that there may be some challenges, and that will be up to the courts. But it’s far more complex issue than just saying, `The arrests are no good.’”

University of Georgia law professor Ron Carlson said such challenges would be an “uphill battle” for defense attorneys who would have to clear several legal hurdles, including proving the officer was unable to determine probable cause for an arrest because of the training lapse.

“There may be a few that are out there where those circumstances don’t necessarily coalesce,” said Carlson, who specializes in evidence and criminal procedure. “Those are the ones that are ripest for a challenge. There is a chance that a few fish will make it through the net.”

Steve Sadow, a defense attorney based in Atlanta, said he agreed. He said he would tend to focus his energy on challenging pending cases, since overturning a conviction is more unlikely.

“The criminal defense lawyer’s emphasis will be pending cases, although some will try to reopen closed cases,” he said. “But that’s like trying to push a rock up hill.”

The review comes as The Associated Press revealed that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is probing a rural police department over training issues. The GBI said it’s investigating a deadly shooting involving an East Dublin police officer who had gone more than a year without mandatory training on the use of deadly force. Records show the officer should have lost his arrest powers several months before the May 2010 shooting.

The Atlanta audit showed the officers failed to get at least 20 hours of training each year covering department policies and other police matters, a requirement put on the books in 1990. The state also requires at least one of those hours to be on the use of firearms and another on when to use force.

Experts say police certification agencies in some other states play a proactive role in alerting police departments and officers when training lapses occur.

In Georgia, however, the Peace Officer Standards and Training Council requires the officers and law enforcement departments to track the training. Executive Director Ken Vance said officers are told on the first day of their training that they are responsible for maintaining the 20 hours of training.

He said there’s no easy way to determine which officers haven’t complied because the council’s computer system can’t handle it. The system is upgrading its software next month, but in the meantime officials look at compliance by a case-by-case basis.

Roy Bedard, a law enforcement consultant who’s been involved in Georgia training cases, said these types of lapses often happen in smaller cities but shouldn’t take place in major departments like Atlanta.

“Georgia kind of relies on each officer to maintain their own certification. That’s a huge problem waiting to happen,” said Bedard. “And at the end of the day, they’re going to have to change it.”

___

From Policeone.com
By Roy Bedard

The female warrior is often more cautious than her male counterpart, spending more time planning, recognizing that brute strength cannot often compensate for poor tactical decision-making

To say that women think differently than men is not completely accurate. It should be put more precisely: Women think about things differently than men do. Though the thought process of men and women may be quite similar in respect to reasoning, a women’s brain is capable of addressing issues in a more complex way, with her thoughts affected by considerably more variables than men, whose minds act in a more linear manner.

As an example, in a modern use-of-force scenario, a man might perceive aggression and think, “Should I pepper-spray this subject?”

A women’s response would likely register the same question, but the emphasis would be dramatically different: “Should I pepper-spray this subject?”

It is easy to see then why the genders, which think very much alike — produce different solutions to similar problems.

Where men tend to focus on the most immediate problem facing them, in this case aggression, they often look to solve their problems in the most expedient way. They naturally tend to resolve issues with scant regard for the metastability of the larger situation and rarely take time to consider the unintended consequences of their actions.

Men think linearly using “if/then” variables. If more problems arise, then men are optimally prepared to manage them as they develop. Pepper spray, for example, causes pain, discomfort, disorientation, involuntary closing of the eyes, respiratory effects, and a profuse burning sensation on the skin. This is what it is designed to do. These effects are helpful in diminishing the subject’s ability to fight and this is the male objective. Where a male officer realizes that he cannot suddenly become stronger, his male mind quickly reverses the equation and realizes that it is possible to suddenly make someone weaker. His thoughts jump to his resources and he begins to choose the best choice for weakening his opponent. He may settle on the pepper-spray. Identifying the problem and matching it with a solution is generally the limitation of a man’s reasoning.

Women tend to see a larger picture and consider the collective effects that their decisions bring. Their objective is to resolve to the situation, to create a lasting equilibrium so that the end product is equal to or greater than when they first arrived. They want to understand why the person is aggressive and what factors are influencing the moment. If they can eliminate the cause of aggression, they reason that the aggression will stop.

Women will often adjust their demeanor and focus on their communications as aggression becomes more intense. This is a survival instinct of the gender whose success is not reliant upon physical strength. Women are more apt to listen to the subject and help that person reason through the problem. Women are calming, utilizing highly complex and sophisticated psychological techniques, some of which are so subtly built into the feminine nature that the women herself may not even be aware of them.

In our scenario, a female police officer will likely also have considered pepper-spray as a solution to this impending problem but in the same moment she will have the ability to consider other variables. For instance, recognizing that pepper spray can not only help to diminish the physical ability of an aggressive subject, it can also cause greater aggression, more intense anger, and a degree of pain that lasts long beyond a subject’s non-compliance.

Using pepper-spray complicates the scene by contaminating not only the subject, but also the arresting officer and others in the immediate area. If the subject is brought to jail or the hospital, the pepper-spray may also affect other service workers who will be forced to come in contact with the chemical. These are all unintended consequences, but because they are connected as potential variables, they may naturally play into her decision.

For women it is nonsensical to create new problems by solving old ones.

The spirit of the female warrior

The archetype for women police officers remains under construction. It is an archetype that requires constructs of the mentor, the nurturer, the educator, the sage — and the warrior — who has been so grossly misunderstood and rallied against that she has faded in importance.

The female warrior must be revived.

Warriors protect the innocent, the weak, and the vulnerable through a variety of techniques and strategies. They are keenly aware of their assets and their limitations. The female warrior is equipped to use violence if necessary when the talking is over. She cannot be deluded in this critical moment by modeling male behavior. She has her own attributes and she must be made to understand them and apply them to her own dilemmas.

The warrior construct rallies for more training. It understands that life is fragile and recognizes the importance in being vigilant and prepared. The female warrior is often more cautious than her male counterpart, spending more time planning, recognizing that brute strength cannot often compensate for poor tactical decision-making. She does not rush into violence, foolhardy proof of modeling male behavior. The female warrior is not afraid to die, but she finds no glory in it as male warriors often do. If her life is to be given, it will be in pursuit of protecting others and she must recognize that her feminine protective nature is the source of all of her warrior strength. If she pretends her strength from some other source she will discover in battle the error of her illusion.

Her spirit is driven by the need to protect and this accounts for her nurturing and mentoring personality. A woman’s warrior spirit supports her other constructs, props them up and allows them to function in pursuit of larger objectives like protecting communities and preserving cultures. The feminine instinct for protection provides a limitless source of inner strength. It does not turn off after the battle, after the adrenalin has exited her system. It remains on, always, vigilant against unknown and unseen threats.

The female warrior is naturally aware of the complex ways in which events are connected and her problem solving skills are finely tuned to the larger picture. She is a master at orchestrating and manipulating the psychology of battle to provide openings and opportunities for victory.

The female warrior is not to be feared, she is waiting to be discovered and understood. The evolving police profession presents great opportunity for the female warrior to once again emerge in the archetype of the ideal and more complete woman police officer in order to reclaim her legacy as the protector of culture and harbinger of feminine virtues.

About the author

Roy Bedard is the President of RRB Systems International, a law enforcement product and training company in Tallahassee, Fla. Bedard travels throughout the United States and abroad training police, corrections and military professionals in close quarter and field tactics. Roy is a Consulting Producer for the A&E series Rookies and Biography Channel’s FEMALE FORCES, starring PoliceOne Columnist Betsy Brantner-Smith and the women of Naperville Police Department. Bedard’s latest project, Operation Wild, is a six episode season focusing on the officers of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Check out his websites at www.roybedard.com and www.rrbsystems.com.

A three part series appearing on PoliceOne.com April 8,15 & 22.

Shooting center mass: Shooting to kill or to stop?

In part one of this three-part series, PoliceOne Contributor Roy Bedard examines the oft-used mantra in police deadly force training: “We don’t shoot to kill. We shoot to stop.”

He tossed a cigar back and forth between his teeth as he spoke. Through the wrapper and into the binder, the two-toned stogy was soaked with saliva showing a greater effort to chew on it than smoke it. He stood in front of us on the line looking to see if everyone was paying attention. He turned, dropped his head and started to pace back and forth as he spoke.

“Center mass. It’s ‘operations central’ for your body, houses your heart, a most important muscle that sends blood to all parts of your frame. Your lungs are also here and they are necessary for the balanced exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. You got nerves, lots of nerves that pass through center mass. The vagus nerve for instance represents the golden highway of neurological life sustaining information between your brain and vital organs. This nerve is the master switch for heart rate and blood pressure. Turn off that switch, empty the pump of blood or puncture a lung and a person is likely to die—quickly. This folks is where we are going to put our bullets.”

Being a rookie police officer on the firing range was both exhilarating and intimidating. I remember the feeling of standing on the line, a .38 caliber S&W six shot revolver in my hand. I had practiced dry firing plenty but now my weapon’s cylinder was loaded with 158-grain semi-wad cutter rounds. Two speed loaders, which sat in a worn leather pouch on my belt offered me a full eighteen rounds of ammunition. I was flanked to the right and left by a dozen or so other rookie shooters. There was silence as we all waited for the range master’s commands. He climbed into the tower.

All of us gazed downrange at the paper targets that hung between metal frames. Through scratched safety glasses I could see a dark silhouette in the shape of a man emblazoned on the target before me. Even back in the mid 1980s, we were aware of the diminishing returns that bulls eye targets had in preparing one for actual combat situations. This is why we shot at man shaped silhouettes; it was psychological conditioning. To point at and shoot a person was an extremely complex ability going beyond simple marksmanship.

In the center of the dark silhouette there was a definitive white outline shaped like a giant coke bottle. It covered the center of the target. This outline caused my eyes to focus more deliberately at it. And there, in the center of the coke bottle there was another circle positioned exactly over where the heart would be if this were in fact a human being. In that circle, the only number I could clearly read from my distance was a large 5X. My eyes were immediately drawn to it. It was clear that this area was designated as more important than the rest of the figure, and it was here that I was expected to deliver my bullets.

There was a sudden crackling of the PA system and the range master began to speak.

“Two shots to the body, center mass…follow it with one to the head. The use of a firearm is deadly force, folks and your shots need to stop the threat. Remember, the ultimate responsibility for taking another human life is yours. No one else can make that decision for you. You have to be prepared both physically and mentally. To stop a deadly threat you have to know when and where to shoot. I want to see good target placement and a tight group on your chest shots. Are there any questions? OK… Is the line ready? The line is ready… on the command… draw and fire!”

More than 700,000 law enforcement officers currently working in the United States have been given this or similar instructions in the academy. In-service training follows suit striving to perfect these skills with advanced range training. Cops recognize that they are granted an incredible authority to kill, to take a life under certain well-defined circumstances. It is called ‘justifiable homicide’ when reasonable minds agree that shooting (and perhaps killing) another person is reasonable and necessary in defense of others. In accepting this possibility of killing, cops must also accept the possibility living with themselves after they have killed. For some, this may be the hardest part. The psychological backlash of killing has impaired the lives of untold scores of soldiers and police officers.

When the last volley of shots was fired the tower came back on.

“Lower your weapons and quickly scan your environment. When it is clear, holster your weapon. Now let’s move downrange and look at your shot placement. People, I want you to remember — we don’t shoot to kill… we shoot to stop!”

These words fell upon my ears as they have hundreds of thousands of other officers throughout the country. Though most reasonable people would not expect two shots to the chest and one in the head to result in a favorable outcome, an odd reversal of psychology conditions us to believe that when a person is shot by a law enforcement officer their untimely demise is never because they were killed, but rather because they died subsequent to being penetrated by bullets in vital areas. How odd a representation? Bertrand Russell once said, “Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never talk of killing for their country.”

They say there are two sides to every story. Surely cops know that headshots and center mass shots are likely to kill. This fact alone meets the statutory allowance defined for the use of deadly force. Is there a legitimate reason or purpose for not admitting then, that police shoot to kill? Here in the south, some of my police colleagues keep it simple when they describe acts of police involved shootings or other forms of deadly force.

The argument can be made that killing and stopping are merely a matter of semantics but words are only semantics if they mean the same thing and convey the same message. Surely where killing always means to stop, stopping can not nearly always mean to kill. They may be similar… but they are not the same.

Because stopping and killing are different things, is it not dangerous to tip-toe around this issue in what seems to be a perpetual state of denial? When we use deadly force, should it be surprising to anyone that one likely outcome is death?
_______________________________

Shooting center mass: I’m told we kill everyone…
In part two of this three-part series, PoliceOne Contributor Roy Bedard recalls a discussion he’d had with a police trainer in the Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is one of the most modern countries in the former communist block, and is quickly becoming a recognized leader in the global law enforcement profession. They are considered quite modern and up to date on western theory, technology, and applications. They produce one of the world’s finest firearms, and are great contributors to the advancement of law enforcement methodologies. Not long ago, while I was giving presentations in the Czech Republic, I was confronted by an unusual perspective that has comparative value to our system of policing here in the United States.

A group of police officers had invited me to visit their police firing range, a modern indoor facility on academy property. The firing range was beautiful — well constructed with proper protective devices in place. Full body silhouette targets could be easily changed behind the hot line, and mechanically sent to various distances. There were men and women in-service who were qualifying with their Czech pistols.

When the signal was given to fire a large plume of smoke arose from the line. During the first volley each officer shot about four or five rounds. I squinted my eyes and looked downrange. Though born with poor vision, my eyes were good enough to see that not one single target had a bullet hole in center mass. Then, scanning the targets more closely I saw what appeared to be holes — lots of holes — in the legs of the target.

“My God,” I thought to myself, “this cannot be coincidence.”

I looked over my shoulder to the range master, who was preparing for the next sequence. “Why are they shooting in the legs?” I said, half smiling, trying to approach the question casually.

“This was a non-lethal drill,” he said without hesitation.

I felt like a fish out of water. I was startled by his answer. It no sense to me. “But if you are shooting at them, how is it a non-lethal drill?”

Looking at me as strangely as I was looking at him, he replied, “We shoot in the extremities, to wound them.”

We’d a reached an impasse on the issue, so we dropped it and the drills continued.

During lunch, I sat with the trainer and reopened the conversation.

“So tell me again about shooting in the legs?”

“Oh, I forgot, you are an American. You kill everyone!”

I thought to myself, “Whoa, hold on there Skippy, you’ve got to be kidding me — we kill everyone?!”

I guess he could read the incredulous look on my face because he said, “Look, I’ve been to the U.S. I’ve trained there. You teach all shots go to center mass followed by a head shot.”

“Yeah, but…” I said, my mind racing for an intelligent response. “There are reasons why we shoot at those locations.”

I began by telling him about deadly force in the United States. I was sure he had missed this part of his classroom instruction — perhaps it was the language barrier, I didn’t know — so I was going defend our method of using deadly force and outline the reasons why we only shot center mass.

I spoke rapidly, trying to outline our entire concept of police use of force. I told him that it was the largest target area of the body and the easiest to hit. I felt like I needed a chalkboard, some chalk. I wanted to draw pictures and graphs, use arrows and lines, and write smart-sounding definitions. I wanted to ‘wow’ him with my deep understanding of this issue and make him take back that last statement. I was, after all, the ‘expert’ they’d invited in from a foreign country. Besides, I couldn’t just let it go.

“We don’t shoot to kill,” I said. “We shoot to stop.”

He nodded and said, “Yeah, but that’s where your vitals are and a shot there would likely kill you.”

His arrogance was remarkable. I told him that it was our job to stop a subject, and the chest was the best area for doing that.

“Have you ever been shot in the leg?” He asked.

“Um, No.”

“Well, that will stop you — it is very painful.”

Now he was really getting under my skin.

“OK,” I said, “but surely your officers under stress are not going to demonstrate the marksmanship qualities they have on the range.” How in the world do you expect them to hit a skinny leg in motion?”

I had him this time.

“Here in the Czech Republic, most of our shootings occur in very close distance, two to three meters?” he retorted.

“Yeah,” I said without thinking, “It’s pretty much the same for us.”

Wrinkling his face, he replied, “You don’t think you can hit a leg at a distance of three to six feet?”

I reeled back — this guy was pissing me off.

“Okay,” I said, “but what if the round passes through? What about the round striking an innocent person who happened to be on the other side of the target?” Now I had him against the ropes, surely these cops are mindful of the dynamic environment in which law enforcement plays out.

Again, he responded without hesitation. “That’s another reason why we aim to the legs. At the distance we usually fire — remember, two to three meters — the bullet has a trajectory towards the ground of only a few feet. A pass through is rare — we use hollow point bullets — but if it does occur, it is not likely to travel much farther.”

He paused, and continued, “You see Roy, here in the Czech Republic we don’t always shoot to kill. Sometimes we shoot to stop — it’s our non lethal shooting.”

I countered, “Non-lethal shots… huh? C’mon, You know, there is probably not a single square inch on the body that is not packed with veins, arteries, or major group of blood rich capillaries that once shot will cause the subject to bleed out.”

As soon as I spoke I realized was now becoming indignant and desperate.

“Yes sir, there is always that possibility, but with medical technology today it is rare that a non-vital shot will ever result in death.”

I thought back to something I heard in the academy years ago. It was meant to be inspirational, but had also become a statistical fact in countries with modern emergency services.

“If you are shot, and you know you are shot, you will probably survive the wound.”

I’ve repeated this many times in the classroom but never had I considered it from the other guy’s perspective. It would be true that if a bad guy was shot and he knew he was shot, he too would likely survive the wound. I guessed that most cops — if forced to take a round in a gunfight — would also rather be shot in the leg than in the heart or head, based solely on the probability of survival. It was intuitive and didn’t require a survey. But I wasn’t done yet. I was representing decades of solid professional American law enforcement philosophy. This whole, “we don’t shoot to kill” concept was a cornerstone of modern police training.

I came back with a fastball. “Well, what if the guy is shooting at you? Dropping him to the ground with a leg shot may stop the forward attack but it is not likely to stop the threat?” he can still fire at you — and you wont have time to assess the continued threat to see if he stopped!

He grinned at me, “If he is shooting at you? Well, then we use lethal shots — two to the chest, one to the head.”

He smacked it out of the park. If you are being shot at, well, then you use lethal shots — two to the chest and one on the head. Of course you do!

I couldn’t believe it. I had never heard anyone do that before, but this guy had given a reasonable explanation for non-lethal shots. My thoughts on the issue had clearly been on autopilot for years. After years of linear thinking my view of deadly force had actually come to a fork in the road.

_______________________________________________________________

Shooting center mass: The dangers of denial
In the third and final part of this three-part series, PoliceOne Contributor Roy Bedard looks at police deadly force training in the United States

Even with about three-quarters of a million police officers working the streets of America — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — few will ever actually exercise their highest level of authority. With all of the deadly threats presented to police officers, America can typically expect only between 300-400 incidents of law enforcement officers firing their weapons at persons annually. Incredibly, it is estimated that in America, less than 12 percent of police officers will ever draw and fire their weapons at another person — in the entire course of their career!

If this number seems extraordinarily low to you, consider that in most western European countries, the career totals for shots fired at people hover around one to five percent. In Latin America, the number is higher, but still is remarkably low in comparison to the United States. In Asia, police use of deadly force is virtually non-existent. Certainly these numbers do not mean that most police officials never face deadly threats — indeed, nearly every police official who makes a career in law enforcement will face multiple incidents where the use of deadly force would have been justified and appropriate. Recent research indicates that a full 92 percent of police officers can recount a situation were they could have used deadly force and yet chose not to do so.

Still, when law enforcement recruits enter the profession they immediately begin preparing for the possibility that one day they may be confronted with the need to kill — or be killed. Nearly all blocks of instruction are laced with this common theme. There are many internal and external variables which must be addressed in order to give clarity during that critical moment; how to control stress, how to react to changing circumstances, how to push on and finish the fight even if you are the first to receive a wound.

When officers recite the “we don’t shoot to kill” mantra — and believe it — we may reasonably conclude that they are not properly prepared to take a human life. Deluding officers into actually believing that police are not supposed to kill — or are even allowed to kill — creates a deadly mental block that will most likely surface in that critical moment of truth — when ending a life for the sake of the greater good may be necessary.

Further, the mantra sends the wrong message to the community. That message indicates that whenever a subject is killed at the hands of a law enforcement officer, then something must have been done wrong, for surely law enforcement does not shoot to kill — they only shoot to stop.

For most informed citizens it is an academic certainty that shooting to kill is not something police do (talk about ammunition for civil rights attorneys and fuel for media persecution!). Should law enforcement officers actually expect to be held to a standard lower than the very one which THEY have created?

Recall the last time that a shooting occurred in your hometown — or in a town within your local TV station’s broadcast area. Is it any wonder that someone asked — and they ALWAYS ask — “Why didn’t the police shoot the subject in the leg or arm — why did they have to shoot him in chest? Why didn’t they try to stop him instead of killing him?”

Last week I wrote about a conversation I’d had with a police trainer in the Czech Republic. I tried to imagine a circumstance where an officer would intentionally leg shoot someone in police work. I thought about subject/officer factors whereby an aggressive subject who is unarmed but is so much larger than the police official that shooting them may be a justified response.

The hurdle to get over is whether this subject is SO large that the officer could justify killing them because their size and apparent strength would be considered in and of itself — deadly. Regardless of this factor, the paper would probably report, ‘Officer Shoots Unarmed Citizen,’ and the agency would struggle to explain the ambiguous variable.

In training we grab students out of their seats and pair them off, a really big one and a really small one. We kind of shrug our shoulders and say, “OK — I guess with these two students this one would be justified in killing that one, you know it’s a grey area.”

Someone almost always shouts out, “I’d rather be tried by twelve then carried by six!” What can you say to that? Our training has been reduced to a flip of the coin.

I thought about short-range weapons that only pose an imminent deadly threat in the close quarters. Not firearms but sticks, knives, bottles, rocks. The standard US response to a subject approaching with one of these weapons is to shoot center mass. We not only stop the threat, we usually kill the threat. But a leg shot…that can stop a subject from advancing and mitigate the threat of the close range weapon. We already teach officers how to move and shoot. Move forward, move backwards, move and shoot.

Keep the distance, fire at the legs, drop the bad-guy — is it possible? Is it reasonable?

After Thoughts

The purpose of sharing this experience is not to push an agenda but rather to present an opportunity to think once again about our policing methodologies. By thinking about it again we will either see a need to change, or gain stronger resolve in our current commitment. There are so many things that we have stopped thinking about in police work because we have grown comfortable in our methods and manners. But like everything in history, yesterday’s certainties usually become tomorrow’s superstitions.

The argument has been made that we don’t shoot to kill, because if we did, we would continue firing even after the threat has stopped. Time and again officers empty their magazines into suspects, firing until the weapon runs dry. It’s common where suspects are filled with dozens of bullets when the smoke clears. We are aware that “over-shoot” is a survival instinct bought on by high arousal and extreme stress — it is something that we can explain but also something that invariably casts doubt on our training methods.

America is a strange place. Police officers and their agencies are constantly under the threat of lawsuits and this is different than in most other parts of the world. Adopting more difficult policies raises the level of responsibility and ultimately the officer’s accountability. Where the civil courts allow failed responsibilities to be paid out in monetary premiums, no one is eager to lay down their own minefield. Damned if you do — damned if you don’t as the saying goes.

This is probably why American police are reluctant to adopt policies that suggest that shooting in certain scenarios might be intended only to wound, for fear that a wounding shot might accidentally kill. No, it is better for a killing shot to accidentally wound. American police routinely adopt policies that plan for the worst, and hope for the best.

Center mass shots will likely remain the only target area taught and supported by training in the United States. If we don’t have a justification to kill, then we simply teach to not shoot. We prefer a model where we aren’t forced to account so much for accuracy, rather our mission is to describe the elements of using deadly force. We prefer that our accountability virtually end at the squeeze of the trigger.

If the bullet hits and kills, that’s OK — if it doesn’t kill, perhaps that’s better?

There is a movement in the U.S. to mandate that crime fighters shoot to wound. Join former police chief Dr. Richard Weinblatt, The Cop Doc, himself a firearms instructor and ex-police academy director, as we look into the recent legislative push in New York to require officers to shoot other than center mass (chest). The Cop Doc radio show examines this controversial paradigm shift condemned by New York City police officials. Our expert panel, NYC’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Dr. Maki Haberfeld, Florida-based international police trainer Roy Bedard, and famed private investigator and former police officer Vito Colucci – who himself was involved in an on duty shooting – look into whether this proposed statutory mandate makes sense for United States law enforcers, how it’s applied overseas, and the reality of its training repurcussions. Tune in for a controversial discussions of police firearms training and deadly force.

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By Jamal Thalji, Times Staff Writer, St Pete Times

Posted: Mar 22, 2011 05:38 PM
Back when Dade City police Captain David Duff worked road patrol, the vests were hot, heavy and hard to wear.
“It was like taking a stove and cutting holes in it,” he said. “It was stiff and heavy and you couldn’t move. If you sat down, it just about ripped your head off.”
And yet he never went on patrol without it.
“It wasn’t mandatory. I still wore it,” he said. “I was old school.”
That, however, is not the only school of thought when it comes to bullet-resistant vests.
Tampa Bay’s biggest agencies — the St. Petersburg and Tampa police departments, the Hillsbourgh and Pinellas County sheriff’s offices — don’t require officers to wear body armor.
Even though vests now are lighter and more comfortable, even though the agencies already pay for them, they simply “encourage” their use. They’re required only when officers face “high-risk” situations.
The policy has come under scrutiny since the Feb. 21 death of St. Petersburg Officer David Crawford. The 25-year police veteran was not wearing his vest when a prowling suspect shot him several times in the upper body, police said.
There’s financial incentive, too. A federal grant that helps pay for vests now requires agencies to adopt mandatory use policies to get the money.
The Hernando County Sheriff’s Office has long required uniformed deputies to wear vests.
“It can be uncomfortable,” said Chief Deputy Mike Maurer. “But it is what it is. It’s a dangerous job.”
Experts warn that vests can only shield officers from so many dangers. Crawford was one of six police officers shot and killed in St. Petersburg and Tampa in a span of 18 months.
The other five — three from Tampa, two from St. Pete — all died while wearing their vests.

• • •

The Florida heat is the most oft-cited reason officers give for not wearing their vests.
While technology has made vests lighter and more flexible, they still don’t breathe well and trap heat.
“You put the vest on in Florida’s heat and humidity, and you can see why officers choose not to wear them and why departments struggle with policies about whether to wear them,” said Roy Bedard, a tactical training expert from Tallahassee.
“Imagine chasing someone down the street and capturing them and getting into a fight with them,” he said. “You’re getting very hot all of a sudden … you could get delirious, you could become unconscious.”

Pinellas sheriff’s Chief Deputy Bob Gaultieri said his agency doesn’t favor a mandatory policy because not every duty requires a vest. Should a deputy answering calls at the station wear a vest?

“It’s very difficult to enforce a blanket rule,” he said, “when people have varying assignments and varying degrees of risk and threat that they face.”• • •

Concealable vests are what most officers wear under their uniforms. Bulkier, stronger vests are worn by units like SWAT. They’re bullet-resistant, not bullet-proof. They’re made of ballistic fibers weaved together to slow the bullet, absorbing its impact.
But they can’t shield all of the body’s vital areas. Three of the six Tampa Bay officers killed in recent months were shot where their vests could notprotect them: in the head.
That’s how Tampa Officers David Curtis and Jeffrey Kocab and St. Petersburg K-9 Officer Jeffrey Yaslowitz were killed.
Tampa Cpl. Mike Roberts and St. Petersburg Sgt. Thomas Baitinger were fatally wounded in the upper torso by bullets that pierced gaps in their body armor.
St. Petersburg Sgt. Tim Brockman, the department’s trainer, always imparts this lesson to rookies:
“There’s no guarantee. They can improve the odds. But you never want to be overconfident in what you can or cannot do because you have the vest on.”

• • •

Police agencies in Clearwater, Largo, Temple Terrace and Dade City have mandatory vest policies.
The Hernando sheriff’s policy orders all uniformed deputies and plainclothes members of the warrants unit to wear vests at all times. Others, like plainclothes detectives, must keep their vests in their vehicles and be ready to put them on immediately.
“I’ve been here 23 years and I’ve never known any other kind of policy,” said Maurer, the chief deputy. “I was surprised to hear there are still agencies out there that make it optional.”
Duff said the Dade City Police Department thought “long and hard” before switching to a mandatory policy seven years ago.
“The safety issue is the biggest issue,” he said. “Cost is another. The vests aren’t cheap. We’re expending $600 per officer for their protection. So they’re going to wear it, period.”
Six years ago, when his son joined the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, where vests are optional, his father gave him this order:
“I told him, ‘You’re wearing the vest.’ He had no problem with that.”

• • •

Some agencies are re-thinking voluntary wear policies, spurred by the recent deaths and the new federal grant requirement.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance cited this reason for the change: 59 of the 160 officers who were killed in 2010 were shot — a 20 percent rise from 2009.
The Bradenton Police Department has already changed its policy to require vest use.
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office is likely to scrap it voluntary policy, too, said Major Maurice Radford.
The problem with requiring officers to wear vests only in “high-risk” situations is that they don’t always know when they’re going to get in one, he said.
“You never know when that confrontation is going to come,” Radford said. “So wearing that vest increases your safety, without question.”
St. Petersburg also will review its policy, though support for change is uncertain.
The Suncoast Police Benevolent Association, which represents many St. Petersburg officers, said it supports the current voluntary policy.
The sheriff’s offices in Hillsborough and Pinellas plan to keep voluntary-wear policies.
The Tampa Police Department, which received $43,000 in federal grant money last year, said officials are discussing what to do about the new requirement.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office has decided not to apply for federal grant money this year. Last year the agency received $24,443.
“The amount of money that is involved is not significant and would not warrant a change in policy,” Gaultieri said.

• • •

Officer Crawford was killed while attempting to question a prowling suspect, police said.
Crawford didn’t know the teenager was armed, police said, and had his notebook out when he was shot.
St. Petersburg police have not said why Crawford was not wearing his vest. Police Chief Chuck Harmon said that will be answered by an internal review.
“I don’t want anyone to think it was his fault for not wearing his vest,” Harmon said. “We had a 16-year-old who pulled out a firearm and shot him multiple times without warning.
“He was just doing something any officer has done a thousand times.”

Jamal Thalji can be reached at thalji@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8472.

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New Media & Police is the topic for this Special Edition of The Cop Doc radio show coming live from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, at the course “Managing the Middle” on information flow between police and new media. Former police chief Dr. Richard Weinblatt (The Cop Doc), the show host and an instructor for the course along with fellow instructor and police expert Roy Bedard, take the show into the classroom as a living lab to interview Roy Bedard and the students/police executives on this vital topic. In the age of youtube, Facebook, and Blogtalkradio, law enforcement needs to figure out how to interact with both traditional and non-traditional media. The special edition of The Cop Doc radio show is LIVE ON LOCATION at the Broward County Sheriff’s Office Institute for Criminal Justice Studies where the three day course, contracted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement – FDLE, is being taught. Join us for an important look at how and why police dominate the entertainment and news mediums and how the information flow can be improved.

By: Roy Bedard
Policeone.com

–A women warrior’s prowess should not be defined by how big or physically powerful she is – in fact, neither should a man’s.–

They say first impressions die hard, and since the first police agencies in America permitted only men, some women have struggled to acclimate to the profession.

The original police uniforms were designed for the male body; straight legged with a flat waist, wide shouldered and with buttoning on the right. Weapons like the truncheon represented the source of a male’s power being predominantly based on upper-body strength. The first multi-shot pistol used in law enforcement was manufactured by Samuel Colt in the 1850’s. The first firearms had large handgrips and significant resistance in the trigger pull that many women struggled with for over a century. Standards and policies were also developed using linear “if/then” problem solving methods typical to men.

By the time women were invited into the profession, the archetype of the ideal police officer had been firmly constructed in the likeness of a man.

The Formation of the Police Officer Archetype
For decades, women have struggled with this archetype and many have attempted to model their behavior and demeanor towards the masculine, often at the expense of discarding their own critically important feminine attributes.

Today many woman police officers feel lost as they enter the profession, constantly being steered by their male counterparts towards a male model of policing. Some women adapt to the modality by reflecting a masculine bearing and demeanor. They essentially become more “male-like” in their presentation, showing behavioral signs and cognitive functioning more typically associated with men. Along with recruiting positive male traits like confidence, toughness and directness, these women characteristically become more aggressive, more self-serving and more cynical in their policing methods. Such is the nature of modeling behavior.

Still, others battle to formulate a new female officer archetype that could effectively compete with the existing male archetype in a postmodern culture that demands diverse problem solving techniques. Often they resent the male archetype considering it fundamentally wrong, overtly excessive and unfairly repressive.

Time has taught us that a well-rounded police officer archetype must have many personality constructs including the mentor, the nurturer, the educator, the sage and the warrior. These constructs are necessary for effectively dealing with the myriad of social problems that cops regularly face. Gender lays claim to these constructs, each considered either more masculine or feminine in nature.

This is part of our socialization, a deterministic belief that the softer skills are the domain of the woman while the harder skills are reserved for men. It is not therefore surprising that the original archetype of the police officer had evolved in a lopsided way, with men placing greater emphasis on the warrior then the other equally important constructs.

The 1960s began an era of archetype reconstruction as the warrior was challenged by the realization that nurturers, educators and mentors were equally important to community policing.

This was a tremendous shake-up for male officers who were previously selected and nurtured within the profession specifically for their overt warrior personalities. As the occupation underwent massive political change, an identity crises occurred to the police archetype. The warrior construct was threatened by a pendulum swing that suddenly preferred the softer service skills over the harder enforcement ones for community policing. All at once the warrior became demonized, cast down and scrutinized by the profession, the community, the courts and the media.

Women entering the profession are often intimidated by the warrior construct as a matter of cultural conditioning. In a modern sense, the warrior is culturally perceived as the one who goes to war – who battles in a physical contest of strength and strategy, roles typically associated with men. The characteristics of the warrior both physically and mentally are often perceived as being “male-like”.

But warriors are not fictional creatures to be imagined in one particular way or another. Warriors are and always have been the protectors of culture and community, a role shared by both men and women equally throughout antiquity. Men have no valid exclusivity claim to the warrior construct. History has shown us that battles are often won with physical prowess but wars are won with intellectual savvy necessitating a marriage of male and female constructs in order for a culture to prevail.

Women have fought on the battlefield, led armies and managed kingdoms. While doing so, they have provided for, mentored, and nurtured their families and communities. These female warrior values have not been lost in time; rather they have been inculcated by subsequent generations making women equally responsible for bringing our culture to this point by which we can now all reference ourselves within the ruminations of the warrior’s work.

Many women have risen from obscurity to take up arms in support of a cause that they were willing to die for and for this they are marked in history as pillars of our high-minded culture. Women have marched forward in battle, at times with a sword or halberd and at times with other weapons more subtle but profoundly more effective. It is the work of many female warriors that has given us our freedom, our dignity, and preserved us as a nation.

Some of our oldest cultural icons show women bearing arms. Where men view weapons as a sign of strength, women more typically view them as a sign of protection. It is interesting to note that it is the woman who is typically depicted bearing the most powerful arms known to mankind. Consider Lady Liberty who bears the light of wisdom, projecting it upward to gain the maximum luminescent effect. To her breast she clutches the book of freedom. Her face is stoic, resolved. If you look at her deeply you conclude that there is nothing temporary about this woman. Her weapons — light and wisdom — leave a lasting effect that cannot be struck down by bullets or blades. At her feet lie broken chains, a conclusion that punctuates her warring strategy.

Consider also the iconic figure of Lady Justice, a woman who bears scales, blindfolded to bias in order to measure truth and fairness accurately. What lasting culture is not firmly seated on these moral virtues? But note that she also holds a sword, a double-edged sword denoting not only the importance in enforcing the cultural code but the impartiality of reason that is sometimes in favor and sometimes against an individual’s private motives. Where else is the concept of law enforcement so eloquently characterized and the image of the law enforcement professional so clearly displayed but in the embodiment of this woman?

The Physical Female Warrior

One of the greatest criticisms of females as warriors is waged upon her natural physical limitations (in particular reduced body composition and inability to recruit massive amounts of muscle fiber due to genetic make-up). This is the most simplistic and yet most profound of the gender based stratifications because it is based on the faulty premise that physical strength is the most important feature in human performance. If one can be persuaded to accept this premise, then it follows that women can never be as adequate as men in the role of the warrior. For dubious reasons, physical strength has often intentionally been over emphasized as the leading virtue of the warrior; this being clearly part of a larger agenda. Unfortunately, this distorted agenda has morphed into a more lasting cultural belief that is almost universally accepted by both men and women alike.

Recall Rosie the Riveter, a character on the famous World War II recruitment poster. She boldly flexes her bicep over the words, “We can do it!” This character was designed to attract women to the workforce by projecting the warrior attributes of power, confidence and assertiveness using a typical male convention, the flexing of muscle. Here is an example of how warrior attributes have been traditionally associated with men, even when directed towards women. Though this poster was designed to get women out of the house and into industry, it heavily relied on the strongly held convictions put in place by a chauvinistic western culture. The underlying message was that men were warriors and women should learn to behave like them. This theme remains with us today. Regrettably our contemporary industrialized western culture continues to send these behavioral and attitude cues that women find difficult to ignore.

But if you think more globally, you will recall images of warrior women like Nike, Artemis, Deborah, Joan of Arc, Zenobia Cleopatra and Boudica, captured in the painter’s brush or the sculptor’s blade — feminine symbols of power and profound strength.

Have a look at the artistic interpretations of these women. They are never depicted as physically menacing or grossly distorted in their physical attributes. Rather, they are all relatively small, well proportioned, well conditioned and armed.

A women warrior’s prowess should not be defined by how big or physically powerful she is – in fact, neither should a man’s. The warrior construct is a mental model that hovers far above the limitations of flesh and blood. It is the constitution of fulfilling objectives using all available resources, the least of which is muscle fiber. Warriors are clever, wily, and adaptable precisely because they recognize that physical strength is a limited variable. Men have to learn this. Women intuitively know it.