So there he was…

A rookie cop who graduated from the academy in December of 2018.  I’m told that his classmates and the staff at a regional academy serving 10 counties voted to award him the class flag.

In March of 2019, while still in field training, he was involved in a shooting.  He rode the bench for a couple of months while the shooting was investigated.  He was only recently cleared to resume field training.

And then 1 July 2019 happened…

That rookie cop, still in field training, responded to a call along with his field training officer (FTO).  I haven’t listened to the dispatch recordings first hand, but it is my understanding that the call was originally an unknown problem call involving someone covered in blood.  The dispatch was later updated to the bloody suspect wielding a knife in a confrontation with a maintenance man who had fired shots.  I do not know the timeline of the update and the arrival of the officers on scene.

What happened next was a tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving situation; a situation which has been torn apart with 20/20 hindsight of numerous keyboards.

Yeah, there are some nits to pick, but there are also two undeniable facts:

-Two officers tried their best to not kill a guy.

-A rookie cop who hadn’t even completed field training and who had been put the ringer of a shooting investigation already made a chips on the table head shot to save his fellow officer.