The metamorphosis of our nation’s law enforcement institution and prescribed police reforms imply changes to police conduct in contemporary society. Revamping the police procedural playbook borne of social justice warriors’ revolution in cities across America has pros/cons. Some postulations are to have civilians (boards) decide how police work should be performed.
How police respond to events has increasingly become a contentious debate, often bordering on ludicrously taking away the rights, tactical responses and resources of law enforcers to defend themselves against suspects (citizens) who posture threateningly and promptly stomp upon cops’ survival instincts and self-defense justifications.
New schools of thought have marinated, and two criminologists’ assessments are at opposite ends of the table. What these gents are tugging on here is known as the “21-Foot-Rule” traditionally taught to police recruits at the training academy.
Dr. Ron Martinelli, a retired California cop whose mission is in forensic criminology –determinedly studying police tactical matters engendering use-of-force and deadly-force applications– seeks to supplant the 21-Foot-Rule with what he calls “GAP.” The “Gun Assault Positioning” (GAP) tactic is what Dr. Martinelli deems “more realistic, practical, and safer” for police officers “during encounters with suspects wielding edged weapons.”
Each police/armed-suspect encounter is “circumstance-dependent.”
What is different between the the 21-Foot-Rule and GAP? Not much, other than broadening the safe space between cops and bladed assailants. Dr. Martinelli emphasizes that each police/armed-suspect encounter is “circumstance-dependent.” I get that. I also get that when a threat to life is imminent, lethal force is engendered.
His research explores the concept of “Action-Reaction Perception Lag Time” as depicted in his field research-testing video excerpted by NBC News. Noted are deliberations (slowing down), creating space (which is largely a static norm among cops), and cover (also nothing novel in policing tradition).
“Of course, they had to put their liberal slant on it using a Berkeley professor who inaccurately alleges that police officers have needlessly killed ‘thousands’ of subjects armed with edged weapons over the past few years.”
Speaking of NBC excerpts, Dr. Martinelli’s perspectives, research conclusions, and teachings were retooled by editors who showed favor to an academician over a learned police practitioner. Dr. Martinelli resentfully pointed out, “NBC News covers my research debunking the ’21-Foot Rule’ in law enforcement deadly force training. Of course, they had to put their liberal slant on it using a Berkeley professor who inaccurately alleges that police officers have needlessly killed ‘thousands’ of subjects armed with edged weapons over the past few years. In reality, every encounter has its own unique challenges and dangers.”
Dr. Ron Martinelli, a noted forensic criminologist who retired from law enforcement in California, often serves as an expert witness in criminal trials…advocating for principled police protocols. (Credit: Facebook/Street Safe Defense)
Objectively, however, “the NBC piece does accurately cover and demonstrate [findings of] forensic human factors research on Action-Reaction Perception Lag Time, the reactionary gap and why officers should never compress time and distance when dealing with suspects armed with edged weapons,” said Dr. Martinelli.
Dr. Martinelli is a proponent of the police profession and diligently argued the War on Police fomented by the Obama Administration. Dr. Martinelli persistently seeks to advance the police mission, to include preservation of lives when circumstances are present…before deadly-force is compelled by suspects’ actions.
It boils down to a him-or-me equation. Within legal guidelines, cops have every right to self-defense when confronted by any armed suspect.
It boils down to a him-or-me equation. Within legal guidelines, cops have every right to self-defense when confronted by any armed suspect. It may not go according to utopian precepts, but police must not be viewed as sacrificial lambs sent into a den of lions (weapon-wielding suspects) blind to sanctity for life.
In that context, Dr. Martinelli implores unscientific concepts of safe gaps in proximity to clearly discernible threats holding sharp-edged weapons, complimented by ability to take cover from slashers. Easily comprehendible logic backed by practical means and supported by the statutory right to fire upon attackers.
“We need to constantly retrain officers on field craft such as this,” Dr. Martinelli told NBC. “Teach them how not to get so captured by the moment. You don’t always have to make an arrest [and] you don’t always have to put your hands on people. If we can teach officers new skills by this research…we can save some lives,” Dr. Martinelli projected.
The same tactical maneuvering extends to military and citizens alike. However, the two criminologists seem at polar ends of the safety spectrum: one uses real-life scenarios to help cops stay alive while the other uses stats to determine cops erroneously kill too much.
Traditional Practices
Dr. Ron Martinelli conducted a study over the course of one year and proposed modifications to the 21-Foot-Rule officer safety protocols traditionally taught at police academies around the nation. It is Dr. Martinelli’s position that police officers may actually be placing themselves in a more perilous predicament by allowing would-be suspects to encroach upon spatial zones, in effect allowing close-quarter battling involving a knife, thus forfeiting safety zones otherwise relegated for reassessments, for self-preservation, for the good of all parties.
Basically, it is what in police parlance is known as a “buffer zone” thereby disallowing any would-be bad guys from enjoying the opportunity to lunge and/or inflict physical harm (or death) upon police officers. Dr. Martinelli beckons police officers to “slow down, create distance, and find cover when dealing with armed suspects.” If any of this sounds endemic, that’s because it is. As I’ve mentioned, easy logic and practice.
My police career culminated in becoming a Field Training Officer (FTO). As an FTO I was in the imperative position to hone newly-hired police recruits as well as gauge lateral (experienced) police officers joining our department. In doing so, the 21-Foot-Rule and synonymous police academy-instilled maneuvers were part and parcel. However, I always implored out-of-the-box mentality, meaning never getting stuck in a myopic mindset. Rules, regulations and policies considered, always have bonus chips in the pocket…ready to go.
Switching tracks or changing gears is necessary for survival…and survival is as common to cops as gills are to fish.
Respecting Dr. Martinelli’s proposition, I do believe cops are some of the most resourceful humans walking the globe; they know when switching tracks or changing gears is necessary for survival…and survival is as common to cops as gills are to fish.
Whether studied at the university or not, cops are always in the book of human psychology…and the street edition has an infinite number of pages to make the head spin. Actually, head-spinning (pivoting) is an essential move to situational awareness and staying alive.
Much like the Tazer’s research-tested reach declines while airborne and thus deemed a failed deployment, reassessing alternate tactics to avert suspect attacks is more a practical feature than a philosophical one. I’ll studiously listen to a mouthpiece in academia spouting knowledge of police/armed suspect encounters after they have worn those battle-hardened duty boots instead of loafers. Until such time anyone’s media-skewed magical numbers do not hop out of a top-hat followed by a fluffy-white bunny…fictionalized contentions about police tactics are of dubious value.
“Made for Media Research”
On occasion, Dr. Martinelli meticulously scours the scorched-earth research methods of others whose statistical work strongly implicates American cops as stone-cold killers of African-Americans and Mexicans versus Caucasian counterparts. Although he gets a tad facetious in his evaluation of myopic statistics tailored to feed fake news diatribe, his position has merit which he supports with a wealth of police experience, common sense, and field-tested denominators. Dr. Martinelli fabulously coined the phrase “made for media research” to denote how some of his opponents breed misleading data to support chosen narratives. We are about to enter the realm otherwise known as the dark side, as professed by Dr. Martinelli’s counterpart.
Needless Officer-Involved Shootings?
Dr. Franklin Zimring, a professor at UC-Berkeley School of Law and author of When Police Kill, believes the police are killing more people…needlessly. Dr. Zimring calls the 21-Foot-Rule “urban legend.” He “is best known for his studies of the determinants of the death rate from violent attacks; the impact of pretrial diversion from the criminal justice system; and the effects of criminal sanctions,” claims his UC-Berkeley bio.
Interestingly, one of Dr. Zimring’s academic publications was included in “the University of Chicago Law Review in 1968 on gun control which found that both gun and knife attacks were both typically unplanned and with no intent to kill, but if a gun was available, it was more likely that the victim would die,”Wikipedia published. Did you catch that morsel? If not, perhaps the next piece of bait will stir some ripples.
Dr. Zimring feels cops kill quite a number of knife-wielding suspects without just cause: “The number of cases we found…of somebody with a visible weapon charging at a police officer actually killing the police officer in the United States was zero,” Dr. Zimring told NBC (San Francisco affiliate).
Well, kudos to the cops for protecting themselves and saving innocents in the process. Countering Dr. Zimring is the police interpretation that, failing deescalation techniques, yes, cops have legal justification to end the threat, as was the case encountered by the NYPD in September, 2016. Martyrdom is for lunatic jihadis, not American police force members.
Martyrdom is for lunatic jihadis, not American police force members.
Dr. Zimring hinges his convictions on statistics to argue his assertions, claiming stats indicate very few cops are killed by knife-wielding assailants. Don’t you just love cloaked compliments? “The threat that the police officer faces (when a suspect has an edged weapon) is not a threat to the police officer’s life,” Dr. Zimring shared in the NBC interview. Another head-scratcher from the lectern. I’m fairly certain the threatening knife-holding human did not come to help butter the cop’s pancakes. Police Lt. Joseph Lawrence Szczerba is not here to argue against Dr. Zimring. Lieutenant Szczerba perished in an on-duty knife attack.
Although NBC wrote “FBI data backs him up,” the realistic translation of Dr. Zimring’s numbers spin is that police officers do a marvelous job protecting themselves after all pre-use-of-force strategies are exhausted. The statistics guy didn’t go into that much.
“In 2017, his book When Police Kill was published by Harvard University Press. The book explores the fact that over 1,000 Americans are killed by police each year. For example, it examines racial disparities in these killings, and concludes that these disparities are not due to higher crime rates in black neighborhoods,” as per Wikipedia. That conclusion has been refuted by countless studies with contrarian outcomes.
Smack dab in the middle of similar anti-police books is Dr. Franklin Zimring’s 2017 release When Police Kill, depicting suspects needlessly killed by police. (Credit: Facebook/Harvard University Press)
As discussed earlier, “made for media research” appears to be the fuel behind Dr. Zimring’s spin against the police, shaping stats to befit unrealistic suppositions. May also pump sales of newly-released books, too.
Indeed, cops are not cold-blooded killing machines. They are, however, in sworn positions to defend life and property…to include their own. Bad guys deserve no better bones than cops or innocent civilians, and Dr. Zimring’s teachings offer the antithesis regarding batches of bad-to-the bone humans. I feel sorry for those who bankrolled baseless research.
Seemingly jaded against Dr. Martinelli and in favor of Dr. Zimring’s contentions, NBC‘s “Investigative Unit” titled its “journalism” to indicate where it unambiguously stood: “Numbers Show Police Training Drill May Be Causing Unnecessary Deaths.” It should read something to the tune of “Armed Suspects Lunging at Police Results in Police Self-Defense” or something similar.
Sharp Facts
Law enforcement officers have the right to self-defend when they feel their lives are in danger, such as the peril posed by a non-compliant knife-holding assailant in denial of verbal commands issued by police exercising lawful capacity. Indeed, it is an officer’s duty to protect lives. That protection encompasses innocents, themselves, and suspects. That order is about right, too. When police confront society’s evil and woeful characters, and it goes according to police procedure and not any Hollywood just-shoot-em-in-the-little-piggy-toe version, the knee-jerk reactions are commonplace and baseless.
The consistent mischaracterization of cops and misinformation of how and why law enforcers operate serves nothing more than to stew a large vat of nonsensical ugly.
The consistent mischaracterization of cops and misinformation of how and why law enforcers operate serves nothing more than to stew a large vat of nonsensical ugly. The Citizens Police Academy and Coffee with a Cop programs offer free education to constituents to not only get to know their police officials but to also glean the agency’s operational philosophies. Among other topics, tactical advantages such as broadened 21-Foot-Rule applications (“GAP”) are demonstrated and dissected.
Relativity
As a boy growing up in NYC, I always admired and revered NYPD police cars and FDNY fire apparatus whose sirens blared up and down the massive grid of narrow streets. Whether born of instincts or common sense, I somehow knew to maintain a safe distance while thinking about their levels of courage.
The NY Daily News was chronically peppered with reports of murder, mayhem and killing of cops.
Whereas Dr. Martinelli practices what he preaches, I only found imagery of Dr. Zimring at the classroom lectern.
Dr. Martinelli practices what he preaches, instructing firearms training at his Street Safe Defense school/range. (Credit: Facebook/Street Safe Defense)
Although I do not intend this to be a slam, it is wholly pertinent to this particular discussion. A November 7, 2017 piece published by The Crime Report begged the ostensibly rhetorical question “Is It Time for Criminologists to Step Outside the Ivory Tower?” It appears crystal-clear that forensic criminologist Dr. Martinelli steps onto the playing field often, as depicted in many online images of him duty-booted and matriculating others in firearms training. As mentioned, I discovered plenty of in-class pictorials of Dr. Zimring in lecture halls.
Ride-alongs are a wonderful exposure to reality-based law enforcement practices, procedures and principles…making for some true grit, balanced, fact-based book-writing…perhaps leading to Eureka! moments.
To be fair, research statistics are especially pertinent when placed in the proper value columns alongside practicality and tangible experiences. Conversely, street-wise practitioners can always brush-up on what others are saying and doing to discern the pros/cons of a subject area.
As The Crime Report‘s Erik Luna stated, “Traditionally…academic authors have written to themselves—that is, to other criminal justice scholars—not to the public or even to policymakers, professionals, or policy analysts interested in criminal justice.” Sounds like it would make for a great debate among PhD holders focused on police policy, tactics, and survivorship. Don’t you think?
