Face-to-face with a gun-toting bank robber, the officer made a split-second decision.
He unloaded his gun and laid it on the ground.
"He could not have won that battle," Newport Police Chief Maurice Shults said. "He was overpowered and outgunned. It's easy to second-guess when you don't have a gun pointed at your head."
The search continued Thursday night for the two men who robbed the Tennessee State Bank the day before in Newport and disarmed a police officer at gunpoint in the parking lot. Witnesses last reported seeing the pair's getaway car, a silver SUV, headed east on Interstate 40 toward North Carolina.
"I don't think we've had any additional sightings since then," said Marshall Stone, spokesman for the Knoxville office of the FBI.
Shults said he stands by the officer's decision to hand the gun over.
He wouldn't give the officer's name.
"He's experienced and trained," the chief said. "He's in good shape and back on duty. He did the right thing."
A national expert on policing said he wouldn't criticize the decision, either.
"There's no 'always' and no 'never' in the real world," said Harvey Hedden, executive director of the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association, which organizes training for departments around the country. "If those two guys definitely had the drop on him, then he might have had no choice."
Wednesday's robbery happened around 3 p.m. when the men walked into the bank at 107 Epley Road, ordered everyone to the floor and demanded cash, Shults said. One of the men carried a high-powered rifle with an extended magazine.
"It was a takeover," the chief said. "We got a silent alarm. When the call came out, he was about two blocks away."
The officer drove to the bank, parked just outside the front door and walked inside by himself with his Glock service pistol drawn, Shults said. The officer had a bullet-resistant vest, but Shults said he didn't know whether the officer wore it when he walked into the bank and came face-to-face with the robbers.
"Most of the time the bank robbery's over before we get there," the chief said. "When he saw they were still inside the bank, he backed out."
The officer tried to take cover behind his patrol car, but the robbers ran out the door after him and cornered him, Shults said.
"He drew them out of the bank," the chief said. "They came right up over or around the car. They told him, 'Don't be stupid.' He felt like it was definitely going to go bad if he didn't comply. You expect them to flee, not to charge you."
The officer hit the pavement, emptied his clip and handed the gun over, Shults said. The robbers took the gun and sped away in the SUV, which witnesses described as either a Chevrolet Traverse or a GMC Acadia.
Police training experts called the officer's response maybe not ideal but still better than a hostage situation or a shootout with wounded bystanders.
"It's generally not a favored tactic to give your gun away, but it sounds like a decent resolution," said Hedden, the ILEETA director. "The suspects are on a hair trigger as well, and you know they're desperate people to do something like this. A long gun like that has more accuracy and greater firepower. We normally encourage officers to maintain control of the gun and not rely on the bad guy's mercy, but it's very difficult to second-guess when someone has a microsecond to make that kind of decision."
Copyright 2012 - The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
