Officer.com Police Blogs & Podcasts

Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com

The news last week was not good. Houston police officer Rodney Johnson was shot and killed by an arrestee who was handcuffed and placed inside the prisoner cage of his patrol car. Although I don’t know any more about this incident than anyone else capable of reading a newspaper, I suspect that the investigation will reveal that the prisoner was carrying a handgun that was missed by the officer during the search incident to arrest.

Whenever someone in my old department received an undesirable assignment, they were likely to hear a wry “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it” from another officer. And, in truth, police work will always be hazardous. An innocuous noise complaint call could turn out to be a gang ambush where the responding officer will be cut down before he knows that the call was a ruse. A drunk driver can blow a red light and T-bone your patrol car as you’re driving down the street with the transmission in Drive and your brain in Neutral. Those things are going to happen, and there really isn’t much you can do about them. But when a crook manages to hang onto a deadly weapon despite what is supposed to be a thorough search by the arresting officer, it’s time to feel both embarrassed and angry, because that kind of thing is so easily prevented.

We get taught lots of neato cop stuff in the police academy. Handcuffing techniques, takedown moves, baton strikes and firearms proficiency are like most skills, where you get faster at them with use and practice. Searching people is one of the simpler skills. Most of the techniques involve keeping the officer from being injured by needles, blades, or other items that the bad guy may have on them. The rest is just being thorough and systematic, and there’s nothing especially complicated about it. Start at the top, and work your way down. If the crook has anything on him or her they didn’t grow themselves, you want to know about it.

There are two problems with searching people. One is that it’s distasteful. We’re socially conditioned not to touch people unless we’re being intimate with them, at least not being any more personal than shaking their hand or patting them on the back. When you search people, you have to touch them everywhere, especially in the areas that are considered most objectionable. It’s exactly those areas where the crooks like to hide things, because they know the cops are reluctant to go there. The other problem is that this is a skill that should not require less time with practice. In fact, it’s probably better for everyone if the cop gets over his socially-conditioned revulsion and is especially meticulous when searching the taboo areas of a person.

But because searching people is distasteful, time-consuming, and usually produces nothing probative and lots of things that are disgusting, we get the task out of the way as quickly as possible. This often leads to embarrassing situations. Many a cop, me included, has gotten to the booking area and discovered a knife, hash pipe, lighter, box cutter, handcuff key or some other item missed in the search that could have been used against the officer or the booking personnel, but wasn’t.

There is a video clip that has made its way around the internet, taken from a surveillance camera in an interview room located in a Southern California law enforcement agency. A plainclothes officer brings in an unrestrained Hispanic subject, has him sit in a chair, and brings him a bottle of water. The officer then leaves the room. The man takes a couple of swallows of the water, reaches into his pants, brings out a full-frame semi-auto pistol, and shoots himself in the head. The man was a suspect (apparently the right one) in the shooting of a uniformed police officer. When the plainclothes officer returns and sees what has happened, he is heard to say, “Oh, f***. Nobody shook him.” Yeah, “oh f***” pretty much sums up the situation.

This was a case of everybody thinking that somebody else had “shook” (searched) the suspect. Unless whoever did “shake” him did an incredibly bad job of it—a full frame semi-auto is kind of difficult to miss—no one searched the suspect and he got all the way to the police station with the gun. Had he been more inclined toward homicide than suicide, his chances for shooting at least one more cop that day would have been excellent.

There are two lessons to be learned here. One: search slowly. Make it your goal to be the slowest searcher in your agency. Before you stuff your next differently ethical future client of the corrections system into your prisoner cage, be able to say with certainty that he or she hasn’t got anything that can harm you with them, unless they’ve swallowed it. If they have swallowed something, you’ve probably got time to get to the jail before they can get to it.

Two: never take the word of a fellow officer that a prisoner that you are going to escort, transport, or pass the time of day with has been thoroughly searched. If you’re the officer that is handing off the prisoner, not only fail to take offense that the receiving officer wants to repeat the search, but challenge him or her to find something that you missed. There’s a theory of child rearing that infants and children need to be touched frequently, and that those that don’t get that tactile stimulation fail to thrive or grow up with emotional problems. Perhaps you can make up for any deprivation that your prisoner suffered by touching them slowly, completely, and often. Before you hand off a prisoner to the booking staff or another officer, know that someone downstream isn’t going to get an unpleasant surprise. Search as if your life depended on it, because it sure as hell does.

For the friends and family of Officer Rodney Johnson, know that I mean him no ridicule or dishonor. If he did make a mistake, it’s one that I have made also, but I was just a little luckier that day. I mourn his passing as I mourn that of any fellow officer. But, as his life meant something and made the world a better place, make his death do the same as a teaching example. Tell yourself, your trainees, and your fellow officers, “Search slowly. Don’t let that happen to you.”