The Denver Postjim spencer
Turney left time, space only to kill
Friday, October 22, 2004 -
Time and distance.
If they said it once, they said it 50 times during Denver police officer James Turney's all-day testimony at a civil service hearing Thursday. Police are trained to control time and distance in their confrontations with suspects. Turney controlled neither when he killed Paul Childs in July 2003. A hearing officer will decide if that was because of bad training or poor police work. Whatever the call, it behooves both police and citizens to consider a deadly continuum. Childs was a 15-year-old, mentally challenged kid with a seizure disorder and vision problems. He died three to five seconds after coming into Turney's view. There's time. He died because he had shuffled within 4 feet of Turney holding a knife. There's distance. Childs died because, in Turney's words, "everything happened so quickly." That was the other refrain from the third day of what is expected to be a nine-day hearing into Turney's behavior. Turney is appealing the suspension he received for supposed tactical gaffes in the Childs case. Childs' death led to sweeping police reform in Denver. No one talked about police reform in the stuffy hearing room at the Civil Service Commission on Thursday. It was all about time and distance. Turney moved quickly from his squad car to the door of Childs' home after Childs' sister called 911 to say her brother was threatening his mom with a knife. Once the house was clear, Turney and three other officers with drawn weapons faced off with Childs. They had time. And with Childs standing behind the front door, they had distance. Then Turney, who was on the porch holding open a metal security door with his left foot, called Childs out. With that decision, time and distance spun out of control. Once Childs stepped from behind the front door holding the knife, Turney decided he was down to two options: Either Childs dropped the knife or Childs got shot. That's what he claimed to have been taught. Not to communicate. Not to stay calm. Not to move his left foot 12 inches and let the security door swing shut. You give the command to drop the knife, Turney said. If they refuse to drop the weapon, you fire. "Did you consider anything other than standing your ground and firing?" Assistant City Attorney Karla Pierce asked. "No," Turney said, "I did not." "Everything happened so quickly," the policeman could do nothing except shoot "center mass" at a disabled teen. Turney even recognized Childs but couldn't figure out from where. It was from an earlier call that ended with Childs' mother explaining that her son had "mental problems." Only there wasn't enough time or distance for Turney to sort that out. "I briefly made eye contact with the suspect," Turney testified. "Then ... training and instinct kicks in, and you start to focus on the knife and his body." Center mass. There was simply no time or distance to process anything else. Not a second to hear the call of "Taser" from his backups. No space to step out of harm's way. "He had gotten to the point where he could have stabbed me or cut me," Turney insisted. Could have. It turned out to be a killing offense. Turney said he didn't want to shoot Childs. He said he had no other choice. "We don't close the door," he said. "We don't back up. We don't let the suspect out of sight." He spoke it like a mantra in behalf of the Denver Police Department. He had a duty not to retreat, he said. A duty not to retreat or no duty to retreat? Pierce asked Turney. He wasn't sure. What he knew was that he had to shoot Paul Childs. There was just no time or distance to do otherwise. Jim Spencer's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com .
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