May 29, 2004

The racists and dimwits scurried from the lunatic woodwork this week, for days filling my telephone and computer with frothing illogic. How dare I praise the city for settling with the mother of that dead boy?

Black people - not the word almost all of them used - will always stick up for black people, again, not the word they used. The words welfare, freeloading and back-to-Africa I did manage to detect while fast-fowarding through and deleting the bulk of it.

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The specifics of the rest do not merit mention here, either. Such hate and ignorance, as my folks always told me, is to be pitied. Never quoted.

It is honest to say I would have fallen over, dropped straight out of my shoes if it hadn't arrived. Call it perverse, but I quite enjoy it. Sometimes people need to rant.

Yet after some 10 years of writing a column, it still boggles me how the loudest of the loudmouths never put their names to any of it.

It takes a bit of arrogance and guts to put your name - in my case, even a photograph - to the mindlessness you pen.

I heard from one cop in the days since I wrote of Helen Childs settling with Denver for $1.325 million as compensation for officer James Turney shooting dead her son, Paul, in the front of their home last July.

I assume he was the only cop who called. He was the only one to identify himself as one. He was reasoned and worthy of being quoted.

His name is John Haney. He is a Denver Police Department detective working out of District 2. There are certain things I need to understand, he told me, a point of view that doesn't always come through in this space.

"I'm proud to be a cop," was the first thing he said.

He was born in Denver, loves the town and never would do a thing to disgrace it, he said. He is, like myself, one of a brood of 11 children. Three of his brothers served as cops, one of whom only recently retired as a division chief.

For long minutes he described the scene at Helen Childs' home last July 5, things others told him, what he's heard over and over, because he was not there.

Paul Childs, he said, was a danger, both to himself and to the officers who responded.

John Haney says he knows that conclusion will always be in question. Perhaps over the long run, he adds, it will be a healthy debate.

Yet what too many people do not understand, what they fail to even contemplate, are all the things that run through the heads of the men and women who don a uniform everyday.

"We want to go home at night," John Haney, 50, said. "We don't want to be cut up, disabled, or, worse, dead. I've got seven children. I confront a man, a woman or even a child with a knife, my safety and that of my co-workers is my chief concern."

Who truly knows what was going through James Turney's head that day? Such confrontations, he said, can happen twice in a day, or a week or in a career.

What is true, he said, is the decision that he had to make, he had to make it fast.

"I've been in plenty of situations in 20 years of being a cop where I've had to draw my gun," John Haney said. "Fortunately, I never had to shoot anyone. It's the last thing any man wearing a uniform wants to do."

Yes, he participated in the police demonstrations the past several weeks at City Hall. And certainly, he believes the 10-month suspension meted out to James Turney is wrong.

"Yes, ours is a brotherhood, but the general consensus is if any guy screws up, he's gone.

"I know it's not a popular idea, but we do know right from wrong. Too often it gets lost that we are decent people, and that we care about the community."

It has been said James Turney was angry that day, feuding with his mother-in-law, threatening to kill her, that he took out his frustrations that day on Paul Childs.

"I've heard it," John Haney said, "and it's the most stupid of all the things that have been said and written. Nobody goes out and kills anyone intentionally. That's a nut who would have never made the department."

Do you know, he asks, what it is like to shoot a human? His two brothers, he said, had to shoot. "And it was so tough on them," he said. "Nightmares. Everything. No man ever wants to do that."

Is there a lesson to be learned from the Paul Childs shooting? John Haney pauses for a long moment. If the clock could be turned back, he guesses, most officers likely would have done the same thing.

It has brought the department together, he said, unlike any event anyone can remember.

"We know we will always be second-guessed, that City Hall will constantly be looking over our shoulders. But as professionals, you have no choice but to go out and do your job as best as you've been trained to do it."

I inquire about James Turney. "It's been tough on him," John Haney said.

He was one of a group of officers who began a fund to raise money to see Turney through his 10-month suspension. Checks of $5 to $100 from "ordinary folks" quickly began pouring in. Private businesses chipped in.

Asked how much they have raised, John Haney simply says, "It's going to take care of him for his 10 months."

And what will the mood be when he returns to the department?

"He will be welcomed back with open arms," he said. "There is so much support and camaraderie around this whole issue. This has pulled everyone together."

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

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