Hickenlooper calls teen's death troubling, seeks new safeguards

By Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News
October 18, 2003

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said Friday the city has a "moral obligation" to do all it can to prevent another shooting like the one that left a disabled, knife-wielding teenager dead.

Hickenlooper, in his first extended comments since District Attorney Bill Ritter cleared the officer who killed Paul Childs, said that he remained deeply troubled by the entire situation.

"Is there blame?" Hickenlooper asked somberly Friday afternoon. "The world feels so often there must be someone to blame.

"That being said, we as a city have a moral obligation to do everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen again."

That could include better police training and better recruiting, he said.

"But these are somewhat amorphous goals," Hickenlooper added in acknowledging that he is grappling for answers in the wake of the boy's death.

"Who we hire as officers, and how well they can deal with complex variables in urgent situations and make life-and-death decisions, and who will react appropriately - that's what we should strive for," he said.

The incident, which Hickenlooper called the "most troubling" he has dealt with in his three months as mayor, unfolded July 5 after the boy's sister called 911 and said he was threatening their mother with a knife. A few minutes later, officer James Turney confronted the boy, who was developmentally disabled, and shot him after he refused to drop the knife.

Ritter concluded that Turney had broken no laws, although he is now subject to an internal investigation into whether he followed police department policies.

Hickenlooper studied the circumstances of the shooting closely. He noted, for example, that the officer was three to five feet from the boy when he opened fire - "close enough that a lunge and you're in trouble."

Hickenlooper searched for words Friday to describe his thoughts on the situation.

"A death at that age for no real reason was profoundly sad," he said.

Part of the sadness, Hickenlooper said, stems from his realization that we live in a society with guns and with violent criminals. As such, he can't envision the day when we won't need armed police officers.

"What's so sad about this is I'm not sure what they (the police) could have done differently, to be honest with you," Hickenlooper said.

Part of his understanding of the difficulty police officers face on the job comes from the day he spent at the academy in a simulator that puts trainees through simulations. Hickenlooper went into a warehouse in the simulation, a gun in his hand, and a man jumped out in front of him with a cat in his hands.

Hickenlooper didn't shoot him, but if the man would have had a weapon, he would have had very little time to react.

"You have six-tenths of a second to decide," he said.

Hickenlooper said he is not opposed to more civilian oversight of the police department, but he said he is not sure what that might entail.

And he said he is pushing heavily for more "less-than-lethal" weapons, like the Taser guns that many officers are now carrying.

"We were pushing that as quickly as we could already," he said.

Hickenlooper also was asked if it bothered him that some members of the black community had questioned his leadership in the wake of the shooting.

"The black community is just like any other community," Hickenlooper said. "There are a lot of different personalities and agendas. I think the sadness and despair are so deep."

vaughank@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5019

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