Phil_Shuman's Blog

     I shot and killed a man on Monday.  I was serving a search warrant in a suspected drug house when my partner and I went in.... there were two suspects inside.. one had a gun  clearly visible in his belt.. we were ten feet apart... bright daylight... heart pounding....I ordered their hands up.. the one with the gun put his hands up right away.. as the other one turned, reached into his waistband, pulled out a dark gun and brought it up as if to point it at me... Boom Boom Boom Boom ..... i fired four times into his chest....... He went down... The whole thing took five seconds.....   Score one for the good guys , right ? almost.. turns out my suspect was pulling out a cordless telephone to call his attorney.   Oops... 

     All this was part of the "DEA's citizen academy.". a remarkable effort by the government to give ''real people'' a behind the scenes look, an insiders  sense of what agents go thru on a regular basis in terms of building cases.. doing drug investigations.. .learning to fire various weapons...our ace producer Bob Tarlau and I were there for a story.... at the range near Castaic... in this case.. the training scenario was serving high risk search warrants.... entering houses where you dont know what you'll find... Does the name Randy Simmons mean anything to you ?

     This particular shooting, quite frankly, would likely have been ruled '' legally justifiable''... i honestly believed in that split second that my life and the life of my partner were in danger.. so I fired.. End of story.  Nowhere in the rules or the law does it say that a cop has to wait to be actually fired upon to fire back... or wait to be run over by a car, or etc etc... after all we're in LA we here about these things way too often unfortunately..  Most of us know this , or at least have been told it, but we still are justifiably concerned.. even outraged, when unarmed people get shot.. and we should be... but we have to look at both sides.. so to speak.. 

     So when it comes to my " shooting, ", the internal investigation and the prosecutors review would almost certainly clear me.. It was a ''clean'' shoot....Legally I'm covered,,...but guess what.. the next day the LA Times headline and the story on Fox 11's News at Ten  would very likely be....... "....DEA agent shoots unarmed man ".  So sue me... I'm going home to my wife and kids.. the bad guy isnt.. .. even if maybe he wasnt totally bad.....so I"m thinking .. if you're so inclined to be in trouble, next time a cop  with a gun tells you to put your hands up.. do it... cause if it's him or you, it's going to be him.

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