Police shoot ex-cop in firefight — a lesson for us

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Police received a call from an Oregon City man saying he was going to kill himself.

Another 911 call came in from his wife saying he had just left the house with a loaded firearm.  The man returned to the house to find his wife had fled the house.

The man, now identified as a former Clackamas County Deputy, opened fire upon police several times. Police returned fire, hitting his leg, causing his death.

These are the impossible circumstances our law enforcement officers face constantly.

– How do you keep a wife safe from a husband wielding a firearm?

– How do you keep a suspect from killing themselves?

– How do you shoot a man firing upon you in hopes that the suspect won’t die?

In this case, only 1/3 of the hopeful conclusions came true.  Police were able to protect the wife, but were unable to stop the suicide and unable to detain the suspect without causing death.  Yet, pressure upon police expect them to detain people shooting at them without harming them — this is impossible.  There is  pressure upon police to be able to use magic or hypothetical de-escalation tactics to make someone not kill themselves.   It doesn’t happen.  In Beaverton, near the Taxpayers Association office, there was a six-hour stand-off with a criminal with a gun threatening to kill himself.  He eventually did.  The police tried everything and were willing to put in the time to save this man’s life.

We need to use this incident as a reminder of how impossible and difficult modern policing really is.

This whole incident unraveled in mere minutes.

We applaud our local law enforcement in this incident.  Their valor is not clouded by the death.  Their valor is made more real because of it because it shows how lethal their challenges are that they face daily.