You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The officer involved shooting.
That’s a media term. It means that a cop has either shot someone or someone has shot the cop.
Either way, it’s usually bad for somebody. It can often be bad for everyone. Just ask the folks in Ferguson Missouri.
It’s Wednesday morning.
I barely get in the door when suddenly the newsroom is alive like a pop corn machine.
People are yelling back and forth, talking about the officer involved shooting.
“We gotta get someone up there,” the EP yells to nobody.
Within moments, I am headed out the door to the crime scene.
A lot of things go through your mind as you respond to a call like this.
Is the cop ok?
Who shot who?
What will the scene be like?
Will it be chaotic? Angry? Will it be sealed off by crime tape ? How close will I be able to get?
We arrive.
A local man with more hair on his head than teeth greets us at the corner.
“what’s happening?” I say instinctively looking at the crime scene down the street.
“Cops everywhere. Someone shot someone.”
His words are so thick with southern in-breeding, I have trouble understanding him. I instantly know he has seen nothing and he is simply manning the perimeter of who cares at the edge of this neighborhood.
“thanks.”
I move to the next front yard where I find a mother and her adult daughter. They are simple women, wearing hoodies and holding a 3 week old infant in a blanket.
They are rocking back and forth and look nervously at the crime tape beyond.
“What did you see?” I ask.
“Officers racing through our yard. Gun fire. maybe four loud bangs.”
They pull back the blanket on the child’s face.
He is asleep, his face so pure, his life so fragile.
“A bullet could have hit him,” the mother says stroking the baby’s soft head.
The infant in the woman’s arms is so gentile, an image that is incongruous with the anger, the violence, the enigmatic angst that fills the street around me.
I thank the women and move to the crime tape.
There’s a cold angry wind blowing from the crime scene. it is suppose to thunder later today and the cold wind from the north is already announcing it’s ferocious intentions.
A gust slaps me in the face and reminds me that I didn’t dress appropriately.
I am wearing slacks and suede cowboy boots and a thin double breasted jacket.
I would look great in court. I look woefully underdressed here.
I move to the tape and stop. I feel the eyes of officers on me.
This is the boundary between us and them.
We can video tape past the tape all we want, but we cannot walk under this yellow boundary.
Like a crime cathedral of solitude, officers collect evidence beyond.
Nothing happens quickly here. Most of the officers stand around in groups of 3 and 4.
I nod to the other photographers who are standing at the crime tape shooting for their networks.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is the main investigative agency here, and the spokeswoman soon joins us outside the crime tape.
She tells us very little, not by design, but because she says, she doesn’t have much to give.
She doesn’t know who shot who. She doesn’t know patient conditions of anyone. It’s almost as useless as a breath mint on Thanksgiving.
I walk back from the tape.
I find some officers I have know for years. They are off to the side, out of sight of the powerbrokers running the crime scene.
This is when I begin to get the real picture of what happened here.
I am told that a sheriff’s deputy was serving an eviction notice and the woman being evicted stabbed him. I hear from multiple sources the woman used a medieval type weapon to cut the officer.
The deputy called for help and arriving police officers encountered the angry woman who reportedly charged a cop who had no choice but to fire twice.
I have since seen the body cam footage of that encounter.
The jumpy, frenetic footage is poignant, revealing, dramatic, senseless.
The woman charges the officer who retreats while ordering her to stop to drop her weapon to get down.
The woman has two hands on the 2 foot razor sharp battle ax and she has it cocked back ready to strike.
She is within a few feet of the officer who screams STOP.
She says “No.”
The officer opens fire.
The first bullet hits another metal sword the woman is wearing under her shirt. The bullet i’m told fragments.
The officer fires a 2nd shot and it hits the 40 year old mother of one in the upper chest.
I hear the metal battle ax hit the ground.
The sound is hollow, final, sad.
The officers are panting, breathing heavy.
I see the body cam of a female officer. She is visibly shaking as she kicks away the weapon.
The woman on the ground is still alive, but says nothing. There is blood under her body and her breaths are strident, pursive, strained.
I hear officers shouting to one another checking to see if they are ok.
I hear a siren in the distance.
The officers try and offer CPR, but it is too late.
The woman takes a difficult breath, her last breath, and then she is no more.
Her eyes are fixed and distant and she is gone.
Hours later, the crime tape is removed. I will walk to the home where she lived, where she was being evicted.
I eventually talk to her mother who is sad, but strong.
She tells me that her only daughter is bi-polar and has had to fight her whole life.
She says her daughter would never initiate aggression unless she is pushed first.
The mother doesn’t understand why the police had to shoot and kill her daugher.
“Everyone knew she was bi-polar” the mom tells me.
The police get the body cam footage onto the news within 24 hours.
“We have nothing to hide,” the police chief tells me.
“The officer verbally told her to stop. She came at him. She had already used the weapon to attack a deputy. He had to protect himself,” the chief adds.
As I prepare to do my live shot at 6pm.
I feel a north wind slap me in the face.
There is cold rain in the air and a flash of lightning in the distance.
I see family members carrying belongings from the woman’s now empty home.
I see other news crews setting up lights, shining at the victim’s home.
I watch the sky swirl with anger, with curiosity.
I look at the street and see a blood stain by the curb.
The rain begins to fall.
Soon it will be a monsoon and the blood will wash away.
Eventually the clouds will part and the sun will come out on this cul-de-sac again.
Will anyone remember the bi-polar lady?
Like the rain clouds replaced by blue skies, will she fade from memory?
The viewing public will forget. But the cop’s family and the woman’s family will never forget. The woman is dead. The cop will always have 6 seconds of insanity that he can never take back, that changed 2 family’s lives forever?
Coming to you in 30 seconds is the cue in my ear.
I look at the camera and take a deep breath.
I feel a sadness here.
I want to get this live shot done and go home.
There’s nothing good I can do here.
Life’s Crazy ™