Tangled Up in Blue

by Rosa Brooks

  Keep your finger outside the trigger guard and off the trigger until you are ready to fire.

  Know your target and what is beyond it.

  “Okay,” said Kowalski. “So I’m just standing here, and suddenly I see Creatine reach to his waistband and it looks like he’s starting to pull out a gun. What am I going to do?”

  “Shoot him?” suggested Lowrey.

  “Fuck no, Rocket Man! I shoot Creatine, and the bullet passes right through his big, empty head, and guess what it does when it comes out the back of his head?”

  We all peered behind Creatine.

  “It takes out Marta and Sparta, who are sitting right behind Creatine, that’s what it does. I eliminated the threat from Creatine, which is good, but guess what? I accidentally also just fucking killed two innocent bystanders, and this is not going to look good on the Use of Force report I’m going to have to file. ‘Know your target and what is beyond it.’ If what is beyond your target is Marta and Sparta, or a busload of crippled orphans on their way to the natural history museum, don’t shoot, assholes. Clear?”

  Creatine didn’t like this. “So, what are you supposed to do? Someone pulls a gun and since you can’t shoot him without taking out someone behind him too, you just, what, let him shoot you?”

  “Creatine, anyone ever explain the concept of taking cover to you? That’s what you do. You pull out your gun, you aim it and shout, ‘Drop the gun,’ or ‘Freeze, police!’ or whatever other fucking cool-sounding TV thing you feel like saying, and you duck behind the nearest big tree.” Kowalski dropped to a crouch behind the desk. “Or just shove your partner out in front of you. That works too. Trust me, you shoot a bunch of crippled orphans by accident, the department will fuck you over so hard you will wish you were dead.”

  On Thursday Kowalski was gone, and for two blessed days we were instructed instead by Officer Garcia, a calm, soft-spoken man who never yelled and who treated everyone with quiet courtesy. And finally, he handed out real guns. We were called up one by one to be issued our duty weapons.

  Garcia handed us each a gun with the slide locked back. “These are unloaded and the slide is locked back, but when I hand this to you, I’m still going to be pointing the barrel at the floor, right? Because why?”

  “Treat all firearms as if they are loaded,” we chorused.

  “Yes. Exactly. And you’re going to take your weapon, and—still keeping it pointed at the floor—you are going to place it in your holster, slide locked back, and you go sit down. When you sit down again, that gun is going to stay in your holster until I tell you different. You are not going to take it out and play with it. You are not going to touch it at all. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” we chorused.

  Garcia wasn’t done. “I’m not kidding about this. I see any safety violations, now or on the range, and guess what you’re all gonna be doing? You’re gonna run a 10-33, going all around the parking lot, every single time I see any safety violation. I see you with your finger on the trigger when it shouldn’t be on the trigger? 10-33. I see one of your classmates with his gun holstered and the hood on his holster isn’t snapped shut? 10-33. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t you. You need to help each other. You see someone else doing something unsafe, it’s your job to point it out and fix the situation. Anyone screws up, everyone runs a 10-33.”

  When we were all back in our seats, guns holstered with their slides locked back, Garcia said, “Okay. Now you’re going to reach slowly for your weapon. You’re going to draw it out of the holster, and you’re going to place it, slowly and carefully, fingers nowhere near the trigger, on the desk in front of you.”

  We obeyed. Garcia studied us, nodding. “Let me tell you something. Fully loaded, the Glock 17 weighs about two pounds. And that’s the heaviest two pounds you’re ever going to carry. Remember that.”

  For the rest of the day, we practiced field-stripping and reassembling our Glocks. On Friday, we were finally allowed on the range.

  By then we had already run several 10-33s. (Sparta dropped her gun on the floor twice, and Creatine accidentally pointed his gun right at Garcia.) Running in full uniform, in the swampy Washington summer heat, was miserable. Most of the recruits were two decades younger than I was, and I generally came panting along at the tail end of the group. I was sweating and shaky, and my knees and hips still hurt, pretty much all the time.

  The only person consistently slower than I was was Hardy, a slender black woman in her early fifties. She jogged to the gatepost when 10-33s were called, but didn’t even pretend to run after that. She just walked the rest of the way. “I’m way too old for this kind of juvenile shit,” she told me.

  “I hear you.”

  In addition to my aching joints, I had developed several odd bruises on my right arm. They didn’t hurt, but they were deep red ovals. They looked a lot like fingerprints, as if someone with strong hands had grabbed my arm and pressed down hard.

  I couldn’t figure out where I’d gotten them. Maybe I had been banging my arm against the slide on my gun without noticing? We had to keep the slide locked back when the guns were holstered, and in that position the slide stuck up a bit and jammed uncomfortably into my forearm. I tried to keep my sleeves rolled down as much as I could to hide the bruises, but it was hot, and sometimes I forgot.

  As we filed out of the classroom to head to the range, Garcia stopped me. He pushed my sleeve up all the way and inspected my bruises, then looked earnestly into my eyes.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yes, thanks,” I said.

  “No, I mean, are you okay?”

  It hit me that he was wondering if I was a victim of domestic abuse. “Seriously, Officer Garcia, I have no idea where these bruises came from. It’s weird. They don’t even hurt. They just look bad.”

  Garcia looked unconvinced. “Well, you need anything, just let me know. You can always come talk to me, anytime.”

  “Absolutely! No problem. Thanks. I’m good!” I gave him my model recruit smile, which was hard to produce because my heart was pounding and I felt simultaneously hot, cold, and clammy.

  At first, things on the range were fine. Before getting to the academy, I had fired a gun only a handful of times, skeet shooting and firing a .22 at summer camp. Astonishingly, my pistol shots mostly hit the targets, which were big, human-size cardboard torsos. Maybe I’ll be good at this, I thought. Given my difficulties with running, it would nice to be good at something.

  Kowalski was back, strolling around and tormenting any recruit hapless enough to be having problems, and he had been joined by several other instructors we hadn’t seen before. One of them, I noticed, was giving Hardy a particularly tough time. She stood there stiffly, staring straight ahead, as he bellowed at her. Soon, we were running more 10-33s.

  By then we were all dripping sweat and wilting from exhaustion, but the instructors sent us right back to the range. “You think you’re going to be shooting under ideal circumstances on the street?” demanded one of the new instructors. “Not going to happen. You’ll be scared, tired, out of breath, hot, cold, shaky. And guess what? If you’ve got your gun out on the street, it’s probably because someone’s shooting back at you. So practice shooting in here while you’re tired and hot and stressed, and just be glad no bullets are coming in your direction.”

  Shortly after that, someone’s poorly aimed bullet ricocheted right off the big metal clip holding up one of the cardboard targets, and Garcia, standing off to the side, was nicked by a piece of flying shrapnel. Dripping blood, he headed off to the Police and Fire Clinic. “I’m fine,” he assured us. “Just a little ricochet.” He was so distracted by the blood that he forgot to make us run another 10-33.

  By the end of the weekend, the bruises on my right arm had multiplied, and new bruises had popped up on my left arm. They were strange—they stayed a deep reddish pink color, and never turn
ed the blue or green or yellow color you usually see as bruises age.

  My husband told me to stop being stupid and go to the doctor, and my mother told me to drop out of the police academy, since it was clearly making me sick. “I’m fine,” I told them irritably. “If I miss any of this training, they’re going to make me start all over with a different group, and I’ll have wasted a whole week. I just bruise easily. The bruises don’t even hurt.”

  At the range the next week, things stopped going well. Satisfied that everyone could at least fire their weapons in the general direction of the targets, the instructors started to run us through more challenging drills: one-handed shooting, quick-draw drills, nighttime-shooting drills with all the lights out. The more experienced shooters—many of them former military, along with a handful of country boys who had grown up hunting—were separating from the pack. I still felt shaky, sweaty, and sick, even though the instructors had eased up on the 10-33s. And for some reason, all my shots were ending up down and to the left of where I was aiming. They were mostly still in the target, but they weren’t going where I wanted them to go.

  “Okay, body armor drill,” intoned Kowalski from his seat in the range master’s booth. “Shooters, you are facing a bad guy who may be wearing body armor, so hitting him center mass might not be enough to stop him. So what you’re gonna do, when the target faces, is quick-draw, fire two shots center mass, then one at the head. Two quick ones to the body, then come to sights, aim carefully, and squeeze off one to the head. Got that? Two to the body, one to the head.”

  I fired two shots at the body. They hit the target, but my head shot didn’t go anywhere near the target’s head.

  We did it again. Again, my head shot landed somewhere near the target’s neck. And again. And again. I could not for the life of me make my shots hit the target’s head. No matter how many times I fired, my target’s unmarred face gazed blankly back at me.

  Although we were surrounded by firearms instructors, not much instructing was taking place. Mostly there was just a lot of yelling. None of the instructors had noticed my head shot difficulties, for which I was grateful, since being noticed generally meant being yelled at. In my peripheral vision I saw that Hardy was being berated by one of the new instructors. I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying, aside from “Are you fucking stupid?” Spittle was flying from his lips.

  Eventually, we were told to break for lunch. Light-headed and dizzy, I retreated to the women’s locker room to splash cold water on my face and loosen my ballistic vest. I felt like I could hardly breathe. It reminded me of the childhood song: “I’m being eaten by a boa constrictor.”

  I started singing softly to myself as I loosened the vest and inspected the proliferating bruises on my arms. “I’m being eaten by a boa constrictor, a boa constrictor, a boa constrictor. . . . I’m being eaten by a boa constrictor, and I don’t . . . like . . . it . . . one bit.”

  Then Hardy walked in, sobbing.

  “Oh hey . . . hey. You okay?”

  She just sobbed some more. Awkwardly, I put my arms around her. I barely knew her. She shook and cried into my shoulder.

  “Hey, hey. It’s okay. It’s okay. What’s wrong?”

  The new instructor—the guy with all the spittle—wouldn’t leave her alone, she finally said. He seemed determined to abuse her for everything she did. He told her she was “fucking stupid,” and that she’d never pass the firearms course. And she thought he might be right, because she was having trouble with absolutely everything, not that being screamed at was helping her calm down and learn. When the new instructor started grabbing her arms and shoulders to reposition her body, Hardy said, she finally took his arm in her hand and lifted it off her shoulder, at which point he screamed, “Don’t fucking touch me! You fucking touch me and I am going to fucking kill you!”

  I was so dismayed by her story that I temporarily forgot my plan to be a model recruit taking whatever was dished out with an unflappable smile.

  “Listen to me, Hardy, that’s not okay. Some of these guys down here—what they’re doing isn’t right. All those sexist and racist ‘jokes’? I’m not kidding, it’s hostile-environment harassment, and that guy shouting at you was completely out of line. Even from where I was standing I could hear him. If someone sued MPD over this kind of shit, the department would lose. If you want to complain about it, I’ll back you up.”

  Hardy had pulled herself together. She wiped her eyes with a paper towel. She didn’t know what to do, she said. She was frightened—she’d never failed at anything before and now she was terrified she would fail at this. We were supposed to start shooting the qualification course the next day. Anyone who didn’t pass by the end of the week would be permitted one additional week of remedial instruction. After that, those who hadn’t passed would be sent to the police and fire clinic to see if there was a medical reason for their poor shooting. After that, if you had no medical excuse, you were out of the academy—done, dismissed.

  “Do not let those assholes get to you,” I told her. “Seriously, fuck them. It’s not you. You’re not bad at this; you’re just new at this. But instead of teaching us, they’re just being assholes. When Garcia comes back, let’s talk to him. I bet he’ll actually help us. These other assholes, you just have to survive them, and don’t let them persuade you that you’re the one with the problem. Come on. We can do this. We’re going to do this.”

  I was trying to persuade myself as much as I was trying to comfort her.

  “We’re new at this. So maybe it will take us a little longer than it will take most of the other people. Maybe we’ll need an extra few days. But we’ll figure it out. We’ll pass. Okay? After lunch we’re going to go back in there and work on it. We’ll be fine.”

  But after lunch, Hardy wasn’t there, and neither was the new instructor who had shouted at her. The rest of us were told that we wouldn’t be going back out on the range that afternoon. Instead, the lieutenant who served as the academy’s second-in-command would be coming to speak to us.

  As soon as the instructors left the room, everyone started whispering at once. No one knew what was happening, but rumors were flying.

  Someone said he’d spotted an official with stars on his shoulder storming into the academy. Someone else said Hardy had filed a complaint against the instructor. He was called Williams, one of the recruits had heard. He was, everyone agreed, completely out of control.

  “What kind of complaint?” I asked. “Harassment?”

  “I heard it was a criminal complaint,” Marta whispered.

  “That man looked like he was having some sort of fit,” Sparta said primly.

  “That guy was fucking scary,” Creatine said. “There was, like, spit all over the place.”

  Finally the lieutenant came in. We all leapt up and chorused, “Good afternoon, sir!”

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “Sit down. Relax. You guys didn’t do anything wrong, but we need your help. We’ve got a very sensitive situation.”

  Officer Williams, he said, was now the subject of a criminal investigation relating to his interactions with Hardy. The rest of us were all considered potential witnesses, and would be required to complete and sign a PD 119 form—a witness statement—providing a full written account of whatever we had seen and heard relating to the allegations against Williams. An internal affairs detective would be interviewing each of us, and we would each be provided with an opportunity to meet individually with a union representative prior to meeting with the detective.

  When the lieutenant left, there was more hushed discussion, mostly involving rumors people had heard. Williams had been sent to teach at the academy because he’d been subject to so many excessive force complaints the department wouldn’t let him patrol anymore, someone said. No, said someone else, Williams had cancer and was going to be medically retired. But no one really knew anything, and eventually everyone fell si
lent.

  After a while, we were led to one of the computer rooms, where we filled out our PD 119s. Then we were sent to wait in the auditorium, where we were called out one by one to meet first with the union rep and then with the detective.

  The union rep was looking unhappy by the time it was my turn.

  “Look, what I want you to know is, you don’t have to tell the detective anything,” he told me. “Okay? Officer Williams is being investigated for making criminal threats. But don’t let talking to the detective intimidate you. If you think Williams was maybe just, well, kidding around, or trying to make a point, just, you know, for teaching purposes, that’s what you should say.”

  “But I don’t think Williams was kidding around or making a point for teaching purposes,” I said. “I think Williams was completely out of control.”

  He didn’t like this answer.

  When it was my turn to meet with the detective, I recounted my locker room encounter with Hardy, and told him that although I hadn’t witnessed the specific statements that led to the complaint, what I had seen had disturbed me, and went far beyond anything resembling appropriate behavior.

  The next afternoon, Hardy was back, but Williams was still gone. Hardy wasn’t saying much; she said she had been ordered not to discuss the situation because of the pending investigation. Rumor had it that Williams had been placed on administrative leave.

  It was now Thursday, and we were scheduled to finish the firearms course on Friday, but we had lost more than a full day of range time to the investigation. I was starting to feel a little panicky. I needed all the range time I could get. Garcia, back from the police and fire clinic, assured us that if any of us failed to qualify by Friday afternoon, we’d get an extra day the following week to make up for the missed time. “You’ll all be fine,” he promised. “I’m going to teach you all to shoot.”

  Back on the range, the instructors started running us through the full qualification course. We started at the twenty-five-yard line and fired from behind a barrier, first from a standing position and then from a kneeling position. We then moved progressively closer to the target, with a different task each time we advanced: one-handed shooting from the strong hand and then the weak hand, quick draw from the holster, shooting from the tuck position, and so on.