AS COP NIGHTMARES GO, this one was looking bad.
On Sunday morning, a reportedly suicidal man had fired through his front door at three police officers, lightly injuring two of the men. And now he had a rifle and was firing at still more cops moving uphill toward his Southeast duplex through wide-open Brooklyn Park.
One of those responding officers, Parik Singh, was hit in the stomach. It was a difficult shot. The bullet traveled dozens of yards at a tough angle, from the shooter’s window on SE 10th, through an empty playground and then to where Singh was trying to huddle behind a large tree.
That meant the shooter either had fantastic aim or a scope. And he could easily fire at the officers trying to rescue their injured colleague. Or, beyond them, at a strip along busy SE Milwaukie, where people were sipping coffee and shopping.
Two officers returned fire. Davonne Zentner fired right after Singh was shot, and then, as three other cops hustled Singh to safety, Justin Clary took up his rifle and fired at the shooter’s concrete garage.
But then? “It got deathly silent,” said Tim Smith, a worker at Chantiques, a furniture store across from the park, who watched the episode unfold while ducking for safety.
By then Sergeant Troy King of the bureau’s Hostage Negotiation Team—called in along with the bureau’s SWAT-like Special Emergency Reaction Team (SERT)—had finally reached the shooter by phone. And at 10:34 am, a little over an hour after police first knocked on 61-year-old Ralph Clyde Turner’s door, King persuaded Turner to come outside and surrender.
“If you can get the person on the phone, talking to you, that means they’re not doing something else, like shooting at somebody,” says Sergeant Pete Simpson, a police spokesman. . “It buys time for officers. And time gives you options. It stops everything and allows us all to calm down.”
No more shots were fired. Singh was rushed to Legacy Emanuel Hospital, where he remained in serious condition on Tuesday, March 8. Turner was taken to Multnomah County jail and arraigned on 10 counts of attempted aggravated murder and other charges Monday, March 7.
And, significantly, he also avoided becoming the seventh man gunned down by cops since January 2010.
Simpson said the system worked exactly as it should, despite the obvious emotions at play: A trained, dedicated negotiator did his job quickly—experts say standoffs typically last four hours—and kept communicating with SERT officers waiting outside.
“The important part is communicating the information to officers who have their eyes on the scene so they know what’s happening,” Simpson says. “That way they’re not surprised.”
All too often, however, that routine seems like a luxury. In cases when someone with a weapon has raced toward a cop, or when someone holed up has refused to talk and continues to fire away, officers say they have no choice but to shoot to kill.
Last November, Craig Boehler was shot by a police sniper after a late-night scuffle with his family led to a standoff that saw him barricading windows and taunting officers and peppering them with gunfire. In December, Darryel Dwayne Ferguson was shot dead immediately after waving an air-pistol replica handgun at two officers who had knocked on his door. Later that month, police shot, but did not kill, a mentally ill man named Marcus Lagozzino, who rushed at officers with a machete. And then, in January, homeless man Tom Higginbotham was shot in an abandoned carwash after coming at two officers with a kitchen knife.
But even when the routine is in place, things have gone awry. As effective as a negotiator might be, actually arresting a suspect requires its own brand of patience. And the handling of Turner’s arrest makes some of the bureau’s past missteps even more glaring.
In last January’s fatal standoff with Aaron Campbell, SERT officers weren’t called. And the presiding sergeants, John Birkinbine and Liani Reyna, failed to share that Campbell had been on the phone with a negotiator when he agreed to leave his apartment.
Campbell, when he emerged, was beanbagged by Officer Ryan Lewton, who wanted Campbell’s hands on top his head, not behind it. Campbell flinched, and then Officer Ron Frashour, who testified he thought Campbell was reaching for a gun, shot him in the back. Frashour was fired last fall, the other officers were suspended.
On Sunday, SERT officers were present, Simpson said, and communication was continuous. Simpson also said negotiators can’t control how suspects (although Campbell wasn’t charged with a crime) will act once they’re outside.
Not that fatal mistakes haven’t happened when SERT officers were present. In November 2005, a negotiator was actually on the phone with Raymond Gwerder, despondent and holding a handgun, when SERT sniper Leo Besner shot Gwerder in the back. Besner said he thought Gwerder was a threat to neighbors.
The city was forced to pay $500,000 in a civil settlement, while Besner was promoted last year to sergeant.
Asked if Sunday’s outcome reflected any lessons learned from the Campbell and Gwerder deaths, Simpson said patrol officers aren’t trained as rigorously as SERT members and dedicated negotiators, but that the bureau’s trainers are always “looking at what the training lessons are.” He also said officers “do an excellent job at this daily. Often it doesn’t rise to this level, where you have people who are shot.”
Joe Key, a retired Baltimore officer who has testified in hundreds of use-of-force cases, for both plaintiffs and cops, said a tactical assault would’ve been justified Sunday.
“That they didn’t shows a lot of control,” he says. “And you’ve got an effective negotiator. He’s up against it trying to convince a guy who shot a cop that it’s okay to come out.”
Cops show up to stop a possible suicide and get shot in the line of duty. I wonder how those asses at the Red and Black cafe view this.
Good job police folk.Sincerely.That stomach wound must be a bitch.Wish you well.Again,good work.
If these dumbass pigs hadn’t turned a simply SIMPLY 911 “possible suicide” call into a complete fucking warzone situation, then this mess would’ve never happened in the first place!
Now these pigs will use this incident (of their own damn making) as an excuse to demand [even more] money, military hardware, sick leave, & paid vacations from the city. What a racket!
“pigs”…. do you realize what an ass you seem to be? You need to put the blame where it belongs pal. “War Zone”…puh-leeze.
I get pissed off at the cops often too when it seems they go overboard and abuse the authority they are entrusted. I’ve experienced it too. I’ve also called in complaint when I thought the officer was doing what I felt to be unethical (using a cemetary as a good hiding place for a radarcheck), and I should have a street named after me for all my traffic fines.
But they perform a needed service within society, and these are people just like you and me.
I would agree with you on alot of the benefits that they enjoy are excessive, a result of a powerful union – right? About time they get piss-tested.
But you sound like a 60’s cliche. Time to grow up.
Yeah, it’s fucking funny how Turner walks out of his home & is NOT shot nor abused in anyway, despite the fact that he shot several cops – however justified. Yet another possibly suicidal man, Aaron Campbell, walks out of his home to surrender, having shot NOONE, & is immediately hit with beanbag rounds & gunned down with a military assault weapon within 3 seconds. The pigs even sicced a dog on Campbell AFTER he was mortally wounded & fell to the ground. Pigs then let Campbell finish BLEEDING TO DEATH for over 30 minutes & put handcuffs on his DEAD BODY. Keep in mind, Campbell had only ONE gun. Which he never even used!
I don’t know about Turner regarding this past Sunday, but Campbell sure as fuck had a reason to be depressed on that day back in Jan. last year.
These pigs brazenly murder citizens & get away with it scot free. But if they manage to NOT actually shoot anybody, Adams calls them “heros”, WTF?! The cops who responded this past Sunday took a simple 911 “possible suicide” call & wildly escalated it into a warzone situation, placing the entire surrounding nieborhood under siege! In the end, Turner simply walked out of his house & surrendered – that’s it!
Had it not ever occurred to anyone that, maybe, EMERGENCY MEDICAL PERSONNEL should’ve responded to a call involving a possible medical emergency? Duh.
I have been critical of the cops and have gone to a couple demonstrations just to make sure they know I am pissed, but I don’t know how they escalated this one exactly. My understanding is that they knocked on the door and he just started shooting, seems like he was the one who escalated it. Maybe if CHIERS had shown up instead of the cops they would have had better luck, or maybe he would have just shot them instead.
I want to trust the cops, I just don’t right now because they keep defending the worst officers on the force. The protests in Madison have been like a TV commercial for police unions, but until the PPA realizes that it is not in their interest to keep bad cops on the job they will be on my shit list. I know that Sandi Day is not an evil person, and based on her service up to that point she was a good driver, but she just can’t be behind the wheel of a TriMet bus once she runs over five people. How many cops who defend Frashour would like to see Sandi Day back behind the wheel?
Well we’re talking about a man who was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time. Cops start banging on his front door (the way cops typically do) & without announcing themselves. For all Turner knows, intruders were attempting to break into his home. So he acted accordingly.
Even if Turner KNEW it was cops at his front door, the man still had a Right to defend himself! You have to realize, these pigs are out for blood & they seem to take prisoners less & less. So, citizens have to take proper steps to defend themselves. All i’m sayin…
HELLO — EARTH TO DAMOSA….
Do you really think they would send EMERGENCY MEDICAL PERSONNEL to the home of a suicidal man known to have several weapons without having the cops go first?
DUH!
And since it was broad morning daylight and the knocking Turner heard was on his front door, I would seriously doubt he thought they were trying to break in.
Cops knocking on your door is also no excuse to blast away either. If so, yesterday would have been my day to shoot one.
C’mon Damosa, do you really want us to think you are THAT stupid?
Turner was looking for ‘suicide by cop’, dumbass.
Cops can be assholes – yeah. I get it. I bet I got more stories than you to illistrate that point too. But they do a needed job, and there are many good cops out there too.
What was the line from that great movie “Touch of Evil”??
“A policemans job is only easy in a police state”
Keep swallowing that coolaid, bro. Since you obviously love the cops sooo goddamn much, you shouldn’t at all be disappointed when the day comes that these pigs knock YOUR door down!
I don’t think it is persuasive to vilify all cops, it hurts your credibility when you have a legitimate grievance and justifies their tendency to stand behind their brothers no matter how bad they fuck up. Calling all cops ‘pigs’ will likely lose you the support of people who might otherwise side with you, including some good cops who could maybe swing an election inside the PPA to a more reform minded leader.
On another note, how about today’s editorial in the Oregonian titled “Yes, ‘suicide by cop’ is bad, but the shooting of a cop is worse”. They argue that it would have been better if the suspect in the above story had died, if it meant the cops had not been injured. Put another way, better a dead mentally ill person than an injured cop. That would have been an offensive thing to read in a comment thread, but the idea that it got the go ahead from the editorial board is unbelievable.
You can always count on DumbAoss to chime in and harsh on all that doesn’t fit his mold of society as he sees it from his basement bedroom at his mother’s house in Tigard. I can all but 100% predict which articles he will post to, mostly letters to the editor but the example here is perfect fodder.
I have to agree with the Oregonian on that. The ‘suicide by cop’ guy is making a choice for himself. You can argue mental illness, but the impression I have is that this guy has somehow managed to be a productive member of society for years. The guy is getting up there.
The cop is just doing his job. It isn’t his choice to get shot.
PS Damosa – thanks to BS neighborhood crap, I’ve had the rare opportunity to have 2 officers at my door, 3 times, in the last 2 days.
They handled themselves professionally, and seemed like guys i could hang with in certain aspects.
What sucks is the fact that whenever Police is at your door, the implication people assume is that you fucked up somehow.
Someone outta write an article on how the police are used here locally for shit they shouldn’t have to deal with. cops being used as an intimidation factor…
Show me a low-down pig who’s done a damn bit of good for anyone ever, & i’ll show you a cost-effective, sustainable, toll-free bridge over the Columbia that repairs itself – with MAGIC! I swear, you lousy cop-lovers who comment on here are like beaten-down slaves. If these filthy, gestapo pigs gunned down a bunch of school kids right infront of your home & the blood got splattered on the front door, the first thing you’d all say is, “fucking brats, must’ve done something.” And i don’t see how the fuck it is one can “vilify” cops. To vilify someone is to insinuate that there’s something redeemable about that muthafucka to begin with. But since these are goddamn COPS we’re talking about, there’s no “vilifying” that can be done. The police are all wild animals, only with OT, & ought to be regarded as such! If anything, i’ve been too generous to these pigs. And any miserable limp-wristed sob who might or might not side with a fucking cop based on whether they’re referred to as “pigs” is clearly a yellow-bellied “moderate” bitch-ass with no balls, who’s too fucking stupid &/or chickenshit to pick a side anyways. Until they all undergo random testing for STEROIDS, until their OT is cut, until certain ones start facing murder charges, until all the really bad apples are made examples of, FUCK ALL OF ‘EM – collectively!
I just don’t understand the level of your anger.
I used to think it took a certain kind of person to want to enforce laws, and that being a fireman would be so much more rad… cool trucks, always saving people, etc.
But I hate to say, the older I get the less I feel resentment to cops and realize the function they perform as needed.
Having said that, i have come across a few guys I couldn’t stand, but also several who treated me with dignity even while ticketing me. Or a couple times even letting me off.
Those guys I just dealt with were cool.
A friend of mine became a cop. He is a good, honorable guy too.
Having said all this, the ideas you had to cut the budget of the police force were ones I agreed with. They made sense. But ‘Gestapo’, pigs, etc….. it alls ounds too easy. “Us vs. Them”
Black and white. I can’t get on board with that.
So maybe the few cops who were decent to you on those particular moments on those particular days were likely real dicks to someone else on another day. Just b/c a pig happens to not punch your number at one single moment doesn’t at all mean he’s not a fucking asshole cop. If a pig nailed every single citizen they approached, they wouldn’t be on the job for very long. They’re not THAT stupid.
It will be interesting this year to see how PPB handles a similar situation with a person of color if it happens. If that person of color dies in the aftermath, there should be major riots and i’ll lead the way if anybody’s with me.