means that the only way the officer will ever draw his gun on
me is if I engage in a drawn-out and utterly unambiguous
sequence of actions.
Fyfe once ran a project in Dade County, Florida, where
there was an unusually high number of violent incidents
between police officers and civilians. You can imagine the kind
of tension that violence caused. Community groups accused the
police of being insensitive and racist. The police responded with
anger and defensiveness; violence, they said, was a tragic but
inevitable part of police work. It was an all-too-familiar script.
Fyfe’s response, though, was to sidestep that controversy and
conduct a study. He put observers in squad cars and had them
keep a running score of how the officers’ behavior matched up
with proper training techniques. “It was things like, did the
officer take advantage of available cover?” he said. “We train
officers to make themselves the smallest possible target, so you
leave it to the bad guy to decide whether they’ll be shooting or
not. So we were looking at things like, did the officer take
advantage of available cover or did he just walk in the front
door? Did he keep his gun away from the individual at all
times? Did he keep his flashlight in his weak hand? In a
burglary call, did they call back for more information or did