hurt unnecessarily. If you take advantage of intelligence and
cover, you will almost never have to make an instinctive
decision.”
7. “Something in My Mind Just Told Me I Didn’t Have
to Shoot Yet”
What is valuable about Fyfe’s diagnosis is how it turns the usual
discussion of police shootings on its head. The critics of police
conduct invariably focus on the intentions of individual officers.
They talk about racism and conscious bias. The defenders of the
police, on the other hand, invariably take refuge in what Fyfe
calls the split-second syndrome: An officer goes to the scene as
quickly as possible. He sees the bad guy. There is no time for
thought. He acts. That scenario requires that mistakes be
accepted as unavoidable. In the end, both of these perspectives
are defeatist. They accept as a given the fact that once any
critical incident is in motion, there is nothing that can be done
to stop or control it. And when our instinctive reactions are
involved, that view is all too common. But that assumption is
wrong. Our unconscious thinking is, in one critical respect, no
different from our conscious thinking: in both, we are able to