Deadly Force: Police Train For Violence But Rarely Fire Their Guns

When the call came out that shots had been fired in Big 5 on Tuesday, Watsonville police officers relied an important but rarely used training: Active Shooter Protocol.

The strategy, developed after 12 students and a teacher were killed in a massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School in 1999, sends officers into a dangerous situation with the goal of disarming the shooter, according to Steve Smith, a former investigator in the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office who’s now an instructor at Galivan College’s police academy.

“It’s a fairly advanced technique,” said Smith, who has 23 years law enforcement experience.

A team of five Watsonville police officers utilized that training when Robin Miranda, 22, used a saw and a grinder to free a shotgun from the firearms display in the store around 11 a.m. Tuesday. He loaded the weapon, fired several shots inside the store and refused to surrender when police stormed the building. Three employees were inside at the time.

Two officers opened fire, shooting five times and striking Miranda twice. Miranda died at the scene.

Smith, who is not involved in the sporting goods store shooting incident or subsequent investigation, said the situation sounded like “a pretty textbook active shooter.”

Before the Columbine shooting, police procedure often involved negotiating with a gunman. The strategy was always contain the scene, nobody comes no body goes out, according to Smith. But when those efforts failed they came up with the active shooter protocol. Officers turn to it when someone is armed, maybe takes hostages and likely doesn’t intend to survive the incident.

At police academy, the scenarios are called “dynamic entries, where they’re made rapidly in small teams.”

Officers enter a building in at least a group of three so they can cover the full perimeter as they move through the structure. This is especially important in tricky layouts, like the aisles of a store, Smith said.

“They’re not trained to immediately fire when someone else fires,” Smith explained. “ … What we’re training them to do it to assess visually what the threat is and the react appropriately.”

In Big 5, Officer Zane Ota and Detective Donny Thul fired. Lt. David McCartney said one bullet from each cop’s gun struck Miranda.

“That’s pretty restrained shooting, actually,” Smith said.

After a shooting, officers often will say they only two or three times but then they find their magazines empty, meaning they unloaded 10 rounds on the person. Smith said that happens because officers shoot until they perceive the threat is no longer a threat.

He speculated that Watsonville officers fired so few shots, comparatively, because Miranda probably went down quickly.

Smith called the situation “tragic.”

Using a gun is the last option for police. Smith explained that officers are taught a “use of force continuum” that starts with the mere presence of police and escalates to verbal commands, hands-on contact, batons, pepper spray and stun guns before graduating to deadly force.

In the 911 call of Tuesday’s shooting, the store manager says she can hear officers yelling at Miranda. Police have said Miranda ignored officers’ commands to drop his weapon and surrender.

Smith said officers entering a situation like Tuesday’s violence at Big 5 would have “The nature of the call itself tells you something bad may happen and you need to be ready for it,” Smith said.

Although police officers often draw their guns during a tense situation, it’s rare officers in Santa Cruz County to fire a weapon in the line of duty.

In 2002, four Watsonville police officers shot Patrick Chioino several times in the chest and once in the head following a 22-hour crime spree across two counties.

Two years later, a California Highway Patrol officer got into a gun battle with a parolee. Donald Bochat opened fire on at least one officer—shooting him in the leg— after crashing and flipping his vehicle at the corner of Green Valley Road and Main Street, not far from where Tuesday’s violence erupted.

A decade ago, Santa Cruz police fatally shot an alleged bank robber. Later, the District Attorney’s Office ruled the six officers, including current Watsonville Police Deputy Chief Rudy Escalante, justifiably fired their weapons against Raimond Quintin of Monterey.

No timeline has been released for the probe of Tuesday’s shooting. Lt. McCartney said beginning Wednesday. Also, counseling services have been offered to the officers and store staff involved in the situation.