OpenCDA

July 11, 2014

Careless Composition or Intentional Deception?

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , — Bill @ 7:21 am

disinformation logoOn Wednesday, July 9, around 11 AM a Coeur d’Alene police officer shot and killed a dog inside a lawfully parked van in a coffee shop parking lot in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.  A few hours after the incident, police SGT Jeff Walther issued a press release which according to the Coeur d’Alene Press read:

Coeur D’Alene Police Officers responded to reports of a suspicious van possibly watching young children in the Downtown Area parked in the parking lot behind 821 Sherman Avenue. Upon investigating the van, as the Officer approached along the driver’s side, a vicious Pit Bull dog lunged out the open driver’s side window toward the Officer’s face. The Officer fired one round from his service weapon as the dog lunged, striking the dog in the chest, dispatching it. The Officer was uninjured by the attack. The van was otherwise unoccupied. Officers are currently working to locate the owner of the van.

The Coeur d’Alene Press and the Spokesman-Review skewspapers, considered by many in the area to be little more than dead-tree mouthpieces for whatever fiction the elements of the City of Coeur d’Alene’s Ministry of Disinformation chooses to issue, dutifully printed all or part of the press release apparently before doing any follow-up or fact checking.

But then KREM-TV in Spokane did the unthinkable in the eyes of the CdA Ministry of Disinformation:  KREM went beyond the City’s press release and sought more information for its news story which aired at 5 and 6 PM.  And when it did, the CdA Ministry of Disinformation’s story began to come apart faster than a playful puppy’s chew toy.

Comparing the KREM-TV story with the Police Department’s press release,  concerned community members almost instantly began to spot the significant contradictions.

  • “Coeur d’Alene Police Officers responded to reports [sic] of a suspicious van possibly watching young children in the Downtown Area parked in the parking lot behind 821 Sherman Avenue.”  How many reports [plural] of this particular  van were there associated with this specific incident?  That wording clearly indicates that there were multiple reports of this particular van.   What exactly did the reporting parties tell the police call taker when they reported the suspicious van?  Was the van occupied by a person or not?   What was the basis for the press release saying “reports of a suspicious van possibly watching young children?”  Vans don’t watch young children, but a person inside might.  Did the persons calling the police report seeing a person inside the van or not?  If so, did all or any of the reporting parties continue to watch the van until the police arrived to see if someone tried to entice a child to get into it?  If not, why not?  Wouldn’t a concerned person’s usual reaction be to continue watching the van to make sure no one in it entices or grabs a child and pulls the child in?
  • “…a vicious Pit Bull dog lunged out the open driver’s side window toward the Officer’s face.”  KREM’s news story video shows the driver’s side window was not fully open; it appeared to be just less than halfway open, possibly enough for a two-year old black Labrador to get its head and neck through.
  • The dog was not a “vicious Pit Bull dog”; it was a two-year old black Labrador.
  • “Vicious?”  That is a very emotionally loaded word.  In fact, “vicious” dogs are mentioned but not specifically defined in Coeur d’Alene City Code §6.20.050.  So in the time between the dog’s appearance and the officer’s shooting it, how did the officer determine it was “vicious?”  A barking dog, even a growling dog, is not necessarily a vicious dog.  It appears to OpenCdA that the press release writers used the word “vicious” more for its emotional effect on readers than for its factual basis.
  • The dog “…lunged out the open driver’s side window…”  How?  The police press release wording suggests the window was fully open, but it appears from the television news footage that the window might have been only open enough for the Labrador to stick its head and neck out but not enough for it to “[lunge] out the open driver’s side window.”
  • “The Officer fired one round … as the dog lunged, striking the dog in the chest…”  The KREM news footage and accompanying still photo strongly suggest the bullet passed through the glass of the partially open window to strike the dog.  Again, this refutes the police press release’s wording which implies the driver’s side window was completely open.  If the dog had lunged out of the open driver’s side window, the bullet striking the dog in the chest would not have passed through the window’s glass.

The majority of the public’s initial commentary accompanying the online skewspaper stories was directed at the necessity and propriety of the shooter police officer’s conduct.

OpenCdA is especially angered by the wording of the Wednesday press release attributed to SGT Jeff Walther.  It sounded to us as if those who contributed to the press release chose language intended to encourage its readers to come to a conclusion not necessarily consistent with and supported by the evidence.

OpenCdA thinks the examination of this incident must not be limited to the conduct of the officer who fired the shot.  We think it needs to go further to understand what in the officer’s mindset, supervision, and training led him to behave as he did in this incident.

To us it appears that some people in the Coeur d’Alene Police Department and City government may have engaged in a calculated effort to deceive the public, maybe for no other reason than to avoid unfavorable publicity.  If so, it’s too late for that now.

We think that the Department owes the citizens and the officer who did the shooting a thorough investigation which includes as a minimum:

  • Obtain and make public the recordings of the incoming telephone calls reporting the suspicious van in this particular incident.  What the reporting parties said and what the police call takers asked and said are very relevant in part because they are the basis for the information ultimately radioed to the police officers.
  • Obtain and make public the recordings of the radio, mobile data terminal, and cell phone communications between central dispatch and the officers involved in this incident.  What information did the responding police officers receive and when did they receive it?  Readers who followed the Otto Zehm homicide in Spokane will understand the importance of this information in helping the officers mentally prepare a safe and appropriate response.
  • Obtain and make public the car- and body-camera recordings made by all the officers at the scene of the shooting.
  • Obtain and make public the central dispatch radio logs relating to this incident.
  • Obtain and make public all reports written by officers involved in this incident.
  • Obtain and make public all witness statements taken as a result of this incident.
  • Obtain and make public the results of the necropsy performed on the dog.  Specifically, we would like to know how many times the dog was shot, was there van window glass in any of the bullet wounds, and did the dog die from the gunshot wound or was the dog euthanized (or “dispatched”) to relieve its pain and suffering?
  • Obtain and make public the Coeur d’Alene Police Department’s manual of policies and practices relating to the use of deadly force.  Thursday night’s KREM news story finally had a news story asking acting Police Chief Ron Clark about the policy governing the officer’s shooting.  Here was how KREM reported Clark’s borderline incoherent answer:

    “The idea is anytime you use your firearm, it’s only to be used during a time that your life or self is under great bodily harm or threat thereof. So that’s the individual’s decision. We train them to only use their firearms during those conditions, so that’s what we’re looking at doing.”

  • Obtain and make public the Coeur d’Alene Police Department’s manual of policies and practices relating to how officers are encouraged, trained, and supervised to avoid using deadly force. They’re obviously trained when the law authorizes them to use their firearm.  Maybe what they need to be better trained in is how to safely and patiently contain and control situations so that deadly force is less necessary or even unnecessary.
  • Did the training and supervision to this and other officers encourage or discourage officers finding and using creative peaceful alternatives to recklessly proceeding into a call without waiting for backup, without ensuring bystander safety, and without having as much control as possible over the incident scene?  Conversely, are Coeur d’Alene’s officers evaluated on how quickly they clear one call to move on to the next one?

Though OpenCdA has very little regard for acting Chief Ron Clark and his command staff, we do happen to believe Clark is (finally) being truthful and sincere when he says the officer who shot the dog is distraught.   We hope, but have little confidence, that the department’s field and command supervisors will respect and appreciate the officer’s emotional state.  For far too long law enforcement officers have been evaluated on their ability to demonstrate they have the requisite level of testosterone to be able to laugh off the pain that accompanies causing an unnecessary and avoidable death.  We believe the officer who shot the dog will not laugh it off, and we hope he will be able to recover and be the kind of police officer needed in Idaho in the 21st century, not late 19th century .  We suspect he can.

We also observe that neither of our two local skewspapers, the Coeur d’Alene Press and The Spokesman-Review, have done any more than brief rehash stories about this.  That is completely unsurprising.  Neither newspaper has the owners, publishers, editors, or reporters with any level of interest in “news.”  They are journalistic dead-enders.  That, too, is sad, because sometimes the kind of change a city needs only happens when the news media shine a light on the roaches that inhabit and sometimes run the city.  But we’re in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the land of perpetual journalistic darkness.

 

 

 

5 Comments

  1. Bill, good observations about the news coverage discrepancies. But there’s another aspect of this that bothers me also–is it true the officer took the dead dog out of the van and left his contact information card on the windshield? Did the officer or one of the backups that must have arrived quickly after the shooting, go into the Java cafe and ask for the owner of the van? If not, why not? And did they have permission to enter the van and remove the dog’s body? Were there photos taken and documented before the scene was disturbed?

    I cannot imagine the shock of the dog’s owner when he came out of the coffee shop to find his dog gone, a bullet hole through his window, blood and shattered glass in his van, and a business card on his windshield. Is that a fair description of the scene?

    Comment by mary — July 11, 2014 @ 9:39 am

  2. Mary,

    Thank you. I don’t have any firsthand information to answer your questions. Those and many others need to be answered by the investigation.

    Like you, I feel very badly for the dog’s owner. It’s difficult to understand how, after shooting the dog and damaging his van, the police would not have gone into nearby businesses and tried to find him. If the incident was predicated on reports that the van’s occupant may have been improperly watching children in the area, it seems to me that predicate didn’t evaporate with the death of the dog. They would want to have found the vehicle’s occupants anyway. But that’s just another reason for the investigation.

    I also hope that the officer who shot the dog does not return to duty until he is emotionally and psychologically evaluated and declared fit for duty. Though I don’t know how truthful the acting Chief was being when he told the news media that the officer was distraught, I would not be at all surprised for that to be factual. To require him to return to duty prematurely would be a disservice to the officer, his family, his coworkers, and the community. It’s difficult to explain, but killing another person’s pet or service animal can be just as emotionally traumatic as killing another person.

    Comment by Bill — July 11, 2014 @ 11:39 am

  3. There seems to be quite a few police shootings in the past year * is this due to lack of training, experience?

    What about the lady who yielded a knife, wouldn’t a taser of mace be effective.
    Why a gun?

    Telling stories is frightening coming from the police * YOU could be next.

    Comment by Sharon Culbreth — July 11, 2014 @ 3:27 pm

  4. Sharon,

    There’s no simple answer to either of your questions. That’s why it is important that thorough, objective investigations of each incident need to happen. The lessons learned from each investigation need to be evaluated and incorporated into policies and procedures that are then used as the basis for better employee selection/assignment/retention, training, and supervision. A major challenge faced by chief executive law enforcement officers is how to write and enact policies and procedures that adequately define required, acceptable, and unacceptable behaviors while also allowing the situational adaptability that is essential for nonlethal resolutions in fast-changing situations.

    Comment by Bill — July 11, 2014 @ 4:10 pm

  5. Bill,

    They do not know how to investigate in Idaho. Real investigators get run out.

    Shoot and kill, no witness and the CdA Press is the best we can get. Never knew who they were, so who cares?

    North Idaho is getting what most people left in the first place.

    Too bad we do not have border control.

    Comment by Stebbijo — July 12, 2014 @ 6:54 pm

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