April 3, 2004

You know, or you should know, that the mayor would love nothing more than to fire James Turney.

This is Politics 101. Firing Turney - the cop who fatally shot 15-year-old Paul Childs - would offend only the Denver cops, the odd talk show host and the reflexively pro-police types. Most of the other people who care deeply about this issue would, I think, applaud the decision.

Advertisement

So, why won't it happen?

Surprisingly, there are actually reasonable answers to this question, although I'm not sure reasonable enough.

Before we get to that, let's start with what we know.

• Whatever else happens, we can start with what we've called the Turney Rule, which is: Suspended or not suspended, disciplined or not disciplined, Turney will never - as in never - be allowed back on the streets.

• The new police oversight rules - announced rather grandly at a news conference in December - were not in place for Turney. But, even if they had been, according to those who should know, they would not have made one bit of difference.

• Chief Gerry Whitman's recommendation of a 20-day suspension is the fourth review of this case, following the DA, the shoot board and the discipline review board. Meanwhile, Manager of Public Safety Al LaCabe, whose review is to be completed within 15 days, is free to ignore everything that has been done before him. You may ask, then, what exactly is the point of all those reviews.

Where does this leave us?

Where else? Back at the beginning.

In the beginning, Turney shot Paul Childs - a developmentally challenged teen who viewed the police as almost surrogate parents and whose family called 911 like some of us call for pizza delivery. If there had been a more comprehensive 911 system, this history might have been relayed to the cops on the scene.

In the beginning, it was learned that this was the second black kid with a knife Turney had shot, although, to be fair, the first case seemed like a reasonable shoot.

Soon after the beginning, we also learned that Turney was accused of threatening to shoot his ex-mother-in-law. No word on whether she was wielding a knife.

You remember the uproar, the marches, the vigils.

And there were those in the law enforcement community, although a minority, who would tell me off the record that Turney never should have put himself in a position where he felt he had to shoot Childs.

And now, Whitman has said much the same in recommending the 20-day suspension, plus another five days for the alleged mother-in-law incident.

Here are some questions:

If you're sufficiently responsible for someone's death that you need to be suspended for it, why aren't you responsible enough that you should be fired? After all, someone died.

How wrong do you need to be before you're wrong enough?

And if, as we can be sure, Turney will be stuck in some corner of the department, say, filing barking-dog complaints, why should we be paying his salary while we wait for him to eventually get fed up and leave?

I told you there were answers. And here's the big one: It's no easy matter to fire a cop.

As you may have heard, there is a Civil Service Commission. And there is every chance that if Turney were fired, the board would overturn it. There's a concept called comparable discipline, and we know what discipline has looked like in comparably questionable police shootings.

And if Turney is fired, it's possible, in what would be a record, for the city to lose million-dollar lawsuits from both sides - from Turney's side and from the Childs family's side.

But there's a bigger issue. If Turney were fired, many cops would never forgive Hickenlooper, who, as it was described to me, might then have the same relationship with the cops that Clinton had with the military. Plus, Whitman might not survive the resultant infighting. And, still, after all the turmoil, Turney could be reinstated.

So, let's add our review to the many reviews already undertaken.

No matter how LaCabe rules - and, yes, that's Hickenlooper whispering the answer in his ear - this is a no-win situation for the mayor. Either one side will be angry or, more likely, both sides.

For me, if you have a no-win situation, you might as well do what's right.

But maybe there's a way to do what's feasible. In a news conference Friday, the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance said it would be satisfied with a suspension of at least a year. That's a major concession.

It could give Hickenlooper room to make the suspension a little longer than Whitman's recommendation. And in the grand tradition of compromise, you try to find the place where both sides are only a little angry.

And, meanwhile, you hope that Turney, from his dank basement office, very quickly turns in his badge.

Mike Littwin's column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-5428 or e-mail him at littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com.

MORE LITTWIN COLUMNS »

Copyright 2004, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.