An autistic, nonverbal teenager with cerebral palsy was shot several times by police and died on April 12th, after being in a coma for a week following the April 5th shooting.
Despite being 676 miles from the Pocatello, Idaho scene, Jensina Hawkins, Eugene Police Commissioner, raised concerns about the issue to Deputy Chief Shawn Adams in a meeting at the Eugene Police Department this weekend.
Hawkins described the video released of the incident, with police cars pulling up—lights flashing and sirens blaring—and “officers jumping out with guns drawn immediately, and they almost immediately proceed to just firing on him rather than de-escalation,” she said. “Can you tell us and our public how that would not happen in Eugene?”
“The optics of it are horrible. It’s a tragic event. Preventable? I believe so,” said Deputy Chief Adams.
He explained that a crucial part of the training the EPD undergoes is dedicated to de-escalation and confrontation simulations. “Time equals distance equals options,” he said. “This is how we mitigate this.”
He tied this concept back to the incident in Pocatello, describing that the chain-like fence created a barrier between the Idaho officers and the knife-wielder.
“Would our officers have deployed deadly force in that? I do not believe so because we would have had the benefit of time and distance,” said DC Adams. “There’s a whole myriad and variety of things and tools that we have at our disposal that we would utilize.” Those tools, he explained, are tasers and 40 millimeter foam tip launchers (a type of bullet that is meant to temporarily incapacitate someone rather than being lethal) that all EPD officers carry.
DC Adams said that when he first began his career, he only dealt with mental health-related incidents on a once-a-month basis, but now, “officers are dealing with that on an hourly basis,” he said. “We’re going to look at what happened in Pocatello, and we’re going to go, ‘how do we develop training around this so it doesn’t happen here?’”
Eugene Police Commissioner Jack Radey recalled an incident similar to the one in Pocatello that happened in Eugene in 2006, which launched more extensive police training in de-escalation for Eugene officers.
“We had a situation with a deranged, suicidal young man with a knife,” said Radey. “He was going into the park to die when the police arrived, and he said, Kill me, man, and advanced with the knife.”
The man was shot with bean bag rounds, but when that was ineffective, he was shot and killed by officers with assault rifles. “After that, I think there was a major rethinking inside the Eugene Police Department,” said Radey.
“To answer your question, why wouldn’t this happen in Eugene?” Radey said to Hawkins, “There’s been an evolution in doctrine and understanding in this department.”
