Academy Day

May 10, 0621

"C'mon Football Head, are you just gonna pout the whole time?"

Arnold kept his arms crossed and continued looking out the passenger side window of the car. "Trust me, Helga. I know exactly why you're bringing me to this class today."

Helga suppressed a smile. "You do, do you? Please, enlighten me."

"You're going to use me as a real-life example for the recruits. And if it also happens to embarrass me, all the better for you."

Helga reached over and rubbed his shoulder. "I promise I won't call you Football Head in front of the recruits. And I'll only insult you once. Twice tops."

Arnold huffed but let her pull his hand out and wrap it with her own.

"Arnold, I do need a favor from you," Helga said softly. Arnold turned and looked at her but said nothing. "I need you to leave the room when I ask you to. No questions. Okay?"

Arnold furrowed his brow in confusion. "Uh, sure."

Helga gently shook their joined hands while she pursed her lips. "Thanks."

0745

"Okay, quiz time. Why don't we deploy a taser in a lethal force encounter without a cover officer? You, back right." Helga pointed at a recruit toward the back of the classroom.

"The potential for failure is high and an officer won't have time to recover from a failure on their own."

"Very good. I'd like to introduce all of you to Deputy Shortman." Helga pointed to Arnold, who was standing near the board at the front of the class with Helga. The classroom was a typical college-style lecture hall with tiered rows of tables. The recruits were broken down into squads, with one squad per row. Each squad had a leader that sat on the right side of the row, while the class Lieutenant and First Sergeant were seated behind the rest.

The class Lieutenant stood up from his seat. "Class, atten-tion."

The recruits all shot to their feet and rendered a salute. "Sir, good evening, sir," they called in unison.

Arnold smartly returned their salute. "Good evening class. As you were." The recruits returned to their seats.

"Deputy Shortman is here because he deployed a taser in a lethal force encounter with a subject that was armed with a knife." Helga clicked her remote and advanced the PowerPoint slide. The image was a photo of the suspect that had attacked Arnold with a knife in traffic. The man's hair was unkempt and was clearly agitated. "The suspect was suffering a mental breakdown at the time of the incident. No prior history of mental illness. Deputy Shortman was dispatched to a man yelling at passing cars and standing in the roadway. No weapons were reported by the initial caller."

Helga advanced to the next slide. She started a video that showed Arnold exiting his vehicle and addressing the subject. Arnold stood at the edge of the frame and the microphone for his dash camera picked up his instructions to the suspect. The class was able to see the man turn and begin approaching Arnold, who began to back up and out of the frame. The man pulled the knife from the back of his pants and charged, but the class could not see what transpired off camera. All they heard was yelling, a popping noise, and the steady clicking of an activated taser before the video ended.

"As you can see, the incident went from fairly routine mental health call to deadly force encounter in a few seconds. Deputy Shortman chose to discharge his taser instead of his sidearm. Thankfully for Deputy Shortman, his taser worked properly and the suspect was incapacitated. However,…" Helga looked over to Arnold, which he took as the signal. He pulled his torn uniform shirt from a plastic bag on the table and held it for the class while Helga advanced the slide to show a pair of photos of Arnold at the scene, still wearing the shirt and displaying his partially cut microphone cord. "As you can see, a taser failure in this case would have ended up with Deputy Shortman being essentially unarmed in a knife fight. With his microphone cord damaged, Deputy Shortman was unable to hear dispatch and was unable to contact us with a status update. I- "Helga paused and cleared her throat, quickly resuming. "We thought we may have lost Deputy Shortman when we couldn't raise him."

Helga's voice had a slight waver to it that only Arnold noticed. "Don't be a yutz like Deputy Shortman. The taser is not to be depended upon in a lethal force encounter if you are by yourself." Helga glanced to Arnold and he could see a mix of sadness and fear in her eyes from talking about the incident. "Thank you, Deputy. That is all."

Arnold nodded to the class and made his exit. Helga waited for the door to close before continuing. She leaned forward and placed her hands on the table in front of her. Her eyes remained fixed on the floor ahead of her. "I also want to make one thing very clear to all of you. I personally think Deputy Shortman made the wrong decision on this call. But he made that decision in order to save a man's life. He was willing to risk his life for it. Deputy Shortman didn't hesitate to take a life when the lives of two of his fellow officers were on the line. If he had hesitated, I would have bled out behind a Tahoe in the street." She raised her gaze and scanned the faces in the classroom as her voice took a hard edge. "Remember two things. First, the only life you get to risk is your own. Second, never mistake compassion for weakness."