By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
In movies or tv shows the detective has a shoot-out with his suspect, and is back on the case the next day. That isn’t how it works in real life though. When an officer discharges their firearm in real life, they are taken off duty until an investigation is complete. How long that is can vary, depending on the case, but it all starts with relieving the officer of their firearm.
“The first thing you do, obviously, after you get the scene secured, you figure out what happened, those officers that discharged their firearm, you immediately have to take their firearm, and we start an internal affairs investigation,” Sgt. Kyle Smith of the Grayson PD explained. “Those guys are placed with companion officers.”
If there is an injury, Smith explained, they have to be medically cleared and that companion officer has to go with them.
For instance, in the recent incident where an officer was struck by a vehicle he was transported to the hospital and had to be cleared to return to work. But he wasn’t the officer who fired a shot.
“In that situation the guy who was struck never fired a round, but the other officer did,” Smith said. “Both officers, subsequently, we had to take their firearms. One was completely damaged, but the other guy, we took his because – obviously – he fired rounds into the car. That officer is still on leave. We put him on what we call administrative leave until the conclusion of the internal affairs investigation.”
They may only return to work once the internal affairs investigation has been completed, and they are deemed physically and mentally prepared to return to duty.
“Once we get done with the internal affairs portion, if they’re mentally and physically prepared to come back to work, we let them come back to work,” Smith said. “But if they’re not, then it all goes into that process.”
That, he said, is one reason you can’t put a number of how long it takes.
“You change the circumstances, you change the outcome,” he explained. “It’s about the severity of the situation. Not every shooting is the same.”
If someone is injured – officer, suspect, or bystander – it can not only change how long it takes for the investigation to be complete, Smith said, it can also impact how soon that officer is ready to return to work following the completion of the investigation.
Even in a situation where no one was injured, like the most recent shooting, Smith said there was no general basis for how soon those officers would return to duty.
“I can tell you this,” he said. “You had two officers fire shots that day. Both are still currently in an internal affairs investigation. They can’t talk to one another. They have to be separated anytime they get interviewed. I can also tell you, they’re not clear yet, and it might be some time.”
He also explained that while he’s sympathetic to the public’s concerns and questions about the incident, he is limited in what he can share.
“I know there are a lot of unanswered questions (surrounding what happened), and the problem is we can’t give them everything, because it affects the criminal investigation side of it. But those guys will be off for a little bit,” Smith noted.
He also called these two recent officer-involved shootings anomalies, noting that officers are regularly trained and recertified on firearms use. This doesn’t just include marksmanship, he explained, but situational scenarios where officers have to decide if they should respond with gunfire.
He further pointed out the correlation between drug abuse and violence.
“You have drugs, you’ve got violence. You’ve got theft. You have theft, you have violence. It’s a vicious triangle,” he said, pinning Carter County’s biggest crime problems squarely on the drug epidemic.
But he refused to speculate on the role drugs may have played in the Evans shooting case or the Carpenter vehicle case.
“I’d have to look at the reports,” he said, when questioned about any possible connection.
Dylan Evans’ arrest report includes a charge of public intoxication on a controlled substance that was not alcohol. Christopher Carpenter’s charges, however, do not include any related to drug or alcohol use at the time of the incident. Both Evans and Carpenter have previous arrests related to public intoxication as well as resisting arrest, with Evans also having previous firearms, assault of a police officer, and fleeing charges.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
