For those in the San Francisco Bay Area, you may recall a highly publicized event that the media latched onto back in July of 1993 when an Oakland police officer (Officer Gildo Tournour) shot and killed a black 19 year old drug dealer during a traffic stop. The officer is white, and this incident occurred in East Oakland which is a gang infested, drug infested, horrible neighborhood to work and live in. Without going into all of the details at great length, what happened was, the officer stopped a vehicle with two occupants suspected of dealing drugs. When the 19 year old black man got out of the car to run away from the police officer, a handgun could clearly be seen in the suspect's hand (a silver semi-automatic). The officer chased the suspect and yelled "Police---STOP!". The suspect then turned his head to the left, and began to swing the pistol under his left arm and point it at the officer. Caught without any cover, the officer immediately fired 2 shots at the suspect from his Sig Sauer 9mm duty pistol. As the suspect hit the pavement, the pistol fell to the ground about 5 feet away from the suspect's right hand. A total of 53 seconds have passed from the initial vehicle stop to the shooting.
Immediately after the shooting, numerous people started pouring out of their homes and apartments and were extremely hostile and violent towards the officer. The usual racist comments immediately began, as the white officer had just shot a 19 year old black man. One of the people in the violent crowd that did not witness anything tries to get the crowd into more of an uproar and shouts out that the cop yelled "nigger motherfucker" before he shot him. The officer is still by himself at this time as only seconds have passed since all of this has happened. The driver of the vehicle that the suspect jumped out of is still in the car and he is not secure, and the officer can not see his hands. For safety reasons, the officer picks up the weapon on the ground (the suspect's weapon) and secures it. He also handcuffs the suspect who has been shot which is standard procedure. During the cuffing of the suspect, he notices two things. First of all, there is another gun on the suspect---a .357 revolver that is loaded and sticking out of his pants pocket. The officer secures that second weapon as well. Also, the officer can see that only 1 of his 2 shots hit the suspect, and the shot that hit him landed in the suspect's shoulder blade. So now this officer can see exactly what is developing before him---a white officer just shot a black man IN THE BACK. The officer obviously knows that the shooting was perfectly justified, but he can now see exactly what will happen. He is picturing in his mind the crowd seeing this and getting more violent. He can also see the news media coming and creating lies and propaganda about the shooting of a "an innocent black youth in the back" as he has seen so many times in the past. Panic starts to set in as he realizes instantly what is going to happen.
By now, he has already called for lots of backup assistance, as well as paramedics for the suspect that was shot. The suspect died within an hour of the shooting.
What followed next was an all too familiar set of circumstances. The crowd began making up blatant lies, doing everything they could to make the suspect look innocent and the police officer look like a rogue killer cop. The "witnesses" (who did not witness anything!) said that the officer was shouting "racial epithets" at the suspect before he shot him. In addition to that, the suspect had a tattoo of an Uzi on one shoulder, was on probation at the time of the shooting, has an extensive drug record, and was packing 2 loaded guns. The suspect's father got in front of the news cameras that showed up and said that his son "was not a criminal" and that he was only in the neighborhood to "visit his grandmother". All of the things that officer Gildo Tournour was afraid of were falling into place just as expected, and he could see his career and his life falling away before his eyes---knowing that he did nothing wrong and it was a textbook shooting.
The suspect's family hired a well-known civil rights attorney who often appears on the "Geraldo" TV show. The attorney said that this shooting was "another example of African-American males being shot in the back by white police officers." The lawyer characterized the police officer on national television as "a violent, pathological racist". He also stated that the story that the officer came up with on the shooting was a "fabrication to cover up illegal conduct.".
A memorial of flowers and giant placards were placed at the location where the shooting incident took place. Of course, the TV cameras had to take video of this to make it look worse for the police. They all zoomed in on one sign that said, "Plaintiff: Black Community. Defendant: Gil Tournour.".
The next to thing to follow of course was the civil rights lawsuit, in which the family demanded multi-millions for "wrongful death" and "exessive force". One of the plaintiff's, the suspect's father, accepted an out of court settlement for $200,000 of which HALF went to the lawyer. The other plaintiff, the suspect's mother (parents are divorced), felt that $200,000 was not enough and she pushed on to take it to trial.
As the trail began, a lot of steam quickly went out of the racial accusations that the defense had been making against the police officer. This is because the officer's wife was present in court every day as a sign of support for her husband. The officer's wife is black.
When the driver of the suspect vehicle got up on the witness stand to testify, he stated that when the police officer pulled them over, he gave the gun to the suspect to use on the officer. However, the driver was not familiar with the operation of a semi-automatic pistol and it was loaded incorrectly. It turns out that the dead suspect did indeed attempt to fire a shot at the officer, but nothing happened because of the weapon being loaded improperly. The driver's own statements knocked down the parade of witnesses that came through the courtroom stating that the suspect "never had a gun in his hand" and that the officer "shot him in the back because he is black".
The final blow to the case came when an expert witness was called to testify and explain to the jury what "action/reaction" is and how a suspect could very easily be shot in the back when just a moment prior to that, the suspect was indeed a threat and was facing the officer. This is part of the training that police officer's receive, but the public knows nothing about. This is something that I have talked about in the past, where many of the things that people get upset about with the police could easily be taken care of if more open communications were in place between police departments and citizens. Most of this "shot him in the back" stuff wouldn't even be controversial if people understood the simple concept of action/reaction. In the demonstration, the expert witness graphically explained how this works. In the demo, a suspect with a handgun in his waistband stands facing away from an officer who has his service sidearm up and pointed at the suspect. The suspect can consistently draw his weapon, twist his upper body around and fire a round back at the officer BEFORE the officer can get off a shot of his own. In other words, action is faster than reaction. Indeed, the suspect will usually be turned back around again, either partially or fully facing away from the officer, before the officer can complete his
initiated reaction to fire. The clear implication: This is how bullets justifiably end up in the backs of fleeing suspects who split-seconds earlier had posed a threat.
The cross-examination of the expert witness lasted last than a half hour. The jury deliberated for only 2 1/2 hours, and the plaitiffs did not win one single penny of the TEN MILLION dollars they were seeking. After a six year ordeal that changed the officer's life forever, it is now over and it has been proven that he did nothing wrong.
One of the reasons I have taken the time to go post this incident here is so that people can see, from a police officer's perspective, what really happens out on the street. When relying on the news media to report a "racial shooting", chances are you are getting totally wrong and fabricated reports. The next time you hear about a police officer shooting a suspect in the back, think about the "action/reaction" phenomenon and could it possibly be applied to that incident? Don't mis-understand me here---I'm not saying that this gives the green light for police to go around shooting people in the back. If you are thinking that out of what I just wrote, then you are not understanding what was just explained. It does NOT justify the police to go around shooting people in the back. However, it certainly does explain why an officer would make the decision to use deadly force (shoot) in a situation where the bullet may end up in the back of a suspect, and then appear to be "shot in the back" when that is not what happened at all. As a side-note to this, I have trained with the expert witness mentioned in these comments. He is an outstanding instructor, and the guy knows his stuff. He once testified on a similar case and explained the "action/reaction" scenario to the jury. The attorney that was suing the police officer for a "wrongful shooting" did not believe what the expert witness was saying, and he demanded to apply that test right there in the courtroom, this time with the LAWYER acting as the police officer. The lawyer wanted to prove that he could indeed get a shot off into the suspect so that the bullet would hit the front of the suspect, and NOT the back---which of couse would prove that the expert witness was wrong. Well, the lawyer made an ass of himself and only reinforced to the jury exactly what was explained to them. Because of action/reaction, there is NO WAY to get a round out of that gun without it hitting the back of the suspect. It's human nature, and we can't control that.
Thanks for reading this.