Rocky Mountain News

URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_2161782,00.html

Johnson: Concerned readers send letters, heartfelt stories

August 6, 2003

Perhaps the most memorable letter of the past month came from a police officer. He wrote a heartfelt three-pager in the days following the killing of Paul Childs, the teenage, developmentally disabled boy shot while brandishing a knife by a Denver police officer.

The officer never gave his name. It was the first time in some dozen years of police work, he said, he ever bothered to contact a newspaperman.

What was eating at him, he wrote, was the suggestion Paul Childs would have never been shot had he been a white teenager.

"Quite frankly," he wrote, "this is a load of crap."

So he told the story of how four years ago, he was chasing two black teenagers who'd just burglarized two businesses and fled in a stolen car.

Soon, the pair crashed. He caught the passenger in a dark field, and was handcuffing him when he noticed the driver rapidly approaching him while reaching into his waistband.

"Stop and show me your hands," he kept telling the boy. The boy kept coming. He yelled that he was going to shoot him, the boy staring at him the entire time. I'll let him take it from here.

"It was the closest I've ever come to shooting someone. I was just beginning to pull the trigger when another officer came up in a patrol car. The boy then fled and was caught a few minutes later.

"That evening, I violated every officer-safety rule I had been taught. I let the suspect get entirely too close to me . . .

"And believe it or not, the only reason I didn't shoot sooner was a thought that kept running through my head. It was the possible newspaper headline: 'White cop kills black teenager.'

"Even when my life was in danger, I was so afraid of the community fallout and inevitable lawsuit, that I chose to take a chance I shouldn't have.

"But I guarantee you, if that kid had been white, I would have shot him . . . "

His wife made him promise never to let those thoughts enter his mind again. He knows, he said, of other officers who are afraid to "take actions" with minorities because of allegations that inevitably arise.

"Many times, it is a split second that decides whether we live or die. Race should not be a factor at all.

"My family and I fully understand that I may not return home from work one day," the officer wrote. "It is a risk that we have grown used to and accept because of our belief that I still make a difference out there.

"However, I will leave this profession in a heartbeat if the day ever comes where I have to take more risks because activists have put too many limits on my ability to protect myself."

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.