Lt. Bender (Art Evans): Mr. Stone, you may be guilty of obstruction of justice, aiding and abetting a known felon, accomplice to a kidnapping and possibly murder. If you really want to clear yourself, my advice to you is to drop your gun and give him back the bag. We have 140 police officers, 75 police cars and two helicopters. I promise you, he WON'T get away! "Ruthless People" (1986)
The known facts of Charlie Kirk's murder - the known facts - are basic. He was engaging in his signature public appearance, in which he has an open-air exchange with people who disagree with him. Someone on the roof of a building about two hundred yards away fired one shot from a thirty caliber scoped rifle, which struck and killed Mr, Kirk. After the shooting, the sniper fled, but was photographed by several video cameras. Law enforcement pursued the leads, ultimately releasing stills of the video, and some of the video itself. Eventually, family members identified the person captured in the pictures and facilitated the peaceful surrender of said individual. Did I miss anything?
I think there are two words in that paragraph which could be considered value-laden. "Fled" - which suggests the shooter was intent on evading capture, and "peaceful" - cooperated with the lawful orders of the officers who took him into custody. The writing was meant to be so.
There has been plenty of writing available to persuade the reader in a certain ideological direction. Some of it is accurate, some not. Some is tolerant, some inflammatory. There is a lot of misinformation out there. One article, in particular, caught my eye.
The article described an exchange between the alleged murderer (I still believe in employing that phrase) and members of law enforcement setting the context for the surrender plan. It was suggested that the suspect would comply with officers only after they agreed he would not be harmed in any way. The title was "Cops give in to demands of (suspect)." That title was apparently meant to invite clicks on an opinion accusing police/FBI of being somehow soft on a criminal.
"Morons," said mine boss Percy Garris (Strother Martin). "I've got morons on my team."
I'm retired, so the statement that generally begins, "If I had a nickel..." has taken on a whole new meaning. In the ten years I spent as a SWAT negotiator I gave, heard, authorized, repeated... We were always prepared to give that assurance even to those "lower than the lowliest dogs." We were there specifically to get desperate people with nothing to lose to walk out the door with their hands up. If it meant telling them we'd give them food (a suicidal person), a smoke (a robbery suspect) or a chance to meet the young woman he was talking to (a parolee) then we'd do it. Tell an armed suspect we'd treat them gently and with respect in exchange for a resolution where no one gets hurt and the bad guy surrenders? Hell, yes.
In a situation where a young man has been murdered in front of his family and friends, where an already divided America has taken sides and begun constructing ramparts, what wouldn't you say to the person who might have pulled the trigger? Well...
You wouldn't say - "You're an asshole, and we're going to beat the fuck out of you, just on GPs." What good would that do?
We called it the surrender ritual. You make them feel good about it. You put on the handcuffs, you turn them over to detectives and then you put away the gear and go rehydrate. And, everyone gets to see the sun come up the next morning.
Years ago, a very desperate wanted person (he'd killed several people) was barricaded in a hotel room near Colorado Springs. He demanded to speak to a member of the press. A very brave press person stepped forward, interviewed the guy and then - the surrender ritual went without a hitch. That wasn't the end of the story.
Morons popped up everywhere. Using members of the press in police operations so...directly was frowned upon by typical department protocols. But, the poor guy really heard it from his colleagues. "Cooperate with the cops, how could you?" That's nonsense, and I said so in a letter to the editor of the Rocky Mountain News.
It became my first published writing piece.
All of that is how you get to be an old retired guy, sitting in front of a laptop, wishing he had a nickel for every time things worked out because a "Mouth Marine" sweet talked someone into surrendering without a fight. I worked with some really good people in those years. I watched them do amazing things just by being human beings about very volatile situations. There is nothing distasteful to disclose.
Give in? Sure. That's the game. We played it well. So did the cops in Utah.
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