As a brand new officer with the LAPD, I was fortunate to have as a training officer the best street cop I ever worked with, and I worked with a lot of them. This was the first night I ever worked with him. As it was getting close to End of Watch, we started the perennial circling pattern near the station so when the on-coming shift came down we’d get in quick. It was near midnight and we were driving in a residential neighborhood when we both noticed two men peering into the picture window of the corner house. Even though I had only a few months on the job, I knew something wasn’t right. My training officer stopped the car, and we both jumped out with our guns drawn. The two men both started walking away from the house in different directions. As we yelled for them to freeze, they both reached into their waistbands and tossed guns on us. After proning them out on the ground and calling for backup, they were taken into custody without further incident.
Once we got them back to the station, my training officer interviewed them separately with me just sitting there. One of them confessed that they were hit men sent out from the East Coast to kill the people who lived in that house. He was a parolee and had done a lot of prison time back east. My training officer asked him, what with his prior record, the fact that he was on parole and had a gun, and knowing he would go back to prison again for this, why didn’t he shoot it out with us. I will never forget what the suspect said. He told my partner, “You both came out of the police car with your guns out, and you were ready. I didn’t want to die!” My training officer then told him, “Your right. We’d of shot you down like a dog in the street.”
After we booked them, I talked to my training officer about that conversation. He told me that every time he got a gun off of a suspect, he would always ask them why they didn’t shoot it out and try to get away. Invariably they’d say something like you were ready, or it wasn’t worth it, but whatever the reason they’d initially give, they’d usually end by saying they didn’t want to die. He would give them that signature line about being shot down like a dog in the street to make an imprint on their mind. He told me, “Someday that guy may have the drop on some cop. I want him to think about the consequences and what’s going to happen to him if he kills a cop. I figure someday that will save a cop’s life.”
From that day on every time I got a gun off of a suspect, I had the same conversation and told him the same thing. I’m sure there’s more then one cop walking around alive today because a suspect who had a gun and had the drop on him hesitated when he thought of the consequences.
