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When Seattle Police officers responded to the location of this past week’s deadly shootings, they arrived to what Assistant Chief Jim Pugel (above, left) would subsequently describe as “an uncertain and chaotic scene.” There had been multiple 911 calls with word of shots fired, potential gunshot victims who needed medical attention, and a shooter possibly on the loose, close to busy intersections filled with people.
Though the circumstances of the event were far more severe and quite different than what most officers experience on a routine patrol, what was similar was the method by which they all applied their training and experience, with ambiguous information, in a rapidly developing scenario with the lives of citizens and emergency personnel at stake.
Just a day before the quadruple murder-suicide in West Seattle, the Seattle Police Department invited media, including WSB, to a training facility in Tukwila for a primer in how officers are trained to deal with equivocal, potentially dangerous situations. Though the outreach was clearly designed to engage the media in the wake of the downtown shooting of Native American woodcarver John T. Williams, as well as a handful of recent, racially charged interactions, the behind-the-scenes look at current training methods is relevant to Thursday’s West Seattle shootings as well as the recent Thomas Qualls shooting in the Alki area.
Amidst the constant pop of gunshots from an adjacent firing range, a four-hour overview demonstrated some current training techniques, provided extensive details on the department’s use of TASERs, and allowed journalists to participate in a hands-on Shoot/Don’t Shoot simulator. The day’s sessions demonstrated the significant challenges officers can face in making split-second decisions, often in situations with incomplete and changing information.
Above all, the Seattle Police Department made it clear that its primary goal is always to diffuse potentially dangerous situations. “Whether it is something that comes up on a routine patrol, or what we saw last Thursday, essentially what we always do is de-escalation,” said Sgt. Sean Whitcomb of the Seattle Police Media Relations Office. And though dramatic events involving police and firearms garner a majority of media attention, the SPD says that what many may not consider is the success they have with many tens of thousands of incidents that patrol officers deal with routinely in the course of a year. According to Officer Dallas Murry, TASER Program Coordinator, 99.8% of the time, officers are able to talk a suspect into submission. “Law enforcement is more of an art than a science,” he said.
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