Should Sgt. Dan May get the award of Medal of Valor?

http://www.startribune.com/484/story/182068.html

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/183108.html

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/180824.html

Please tell us why you vote the way you did.

I am sure I would never want to be in the situation that Sgt. May was in. However, this shooting caused such a huge rift in the community that is still an underlying part of the feelings that go on today that it is completely and utterly unnecessary to open that rift again. Each situation must be looked at in its entirety. It seems that the board that made this decision did so in a vacuum.

We will be doing a news story on Sgt. May on our cable show, M.T.N. Ch-17
Whick only air's in Minneapolis. next Sat. 7:00 PM.

If anyone wish to be on the show too and talk about firearms or carry permit please call me. We can set up a time to tape.

An interesting article about suspects being "shot in the back" - with the research done in Minnesota. I can't remember where this was first published.

(1999) - a recent study by Dr. Bill Lewinsky,completed at the University of Minnesota - Mankato has demonstrated how in the aftermath of a shooting, while it may appear a suspect was shot in the back, he was in fact threatening the police officer when shot was fired.

"We've known for a long time that action can beat reaction," Lewinski says, "but just how fast IS action?" Lewinski, a police psychologist who has been studying police shooting decisions in the U.S. and Canada for over 25 years, set out to measure it.

Using time-coded videotape and 25 law enforcement student volunteers, Lewinski established a baseline for suspect action time by recording exactly how long it takes persons playing the role of threatening subjects to raise a weapon from beside their right thigh to shoulder height and pull the trigger.

To just "throw" a shot without aiming or establishing target acquisition took an average of .43 second. The fastest time was .28 second.

For the meat of his study, Lewinski then measured turning speed--how long it took for a threatening subject to start to raise a weapon and simultaneously to turn away from a stationary starting position, as if turning away from a police officer attempting to deal with him or her.

With multiple repetitions, role-players turned from 3 starting positions, always holding a .22-caliber revolver in their right hand. First they were positioned standing sideways, looking in the direction of their right shoulder at the camera, which was stationed where a contact officer might be on a field stop. Whenever they decided to do so, the suspects moved the gun up in a threatening manner and at the same time turned toward their left and ran away to the right at about a 70-degree angle from the officer's perspective.

The average time for each subject to rotate and run at least one step was .32 second. The fastest was .18 second.

The next turn-and-run started from the same positioning, but this time the subjects ran directly away from the officer. Here the average turning time was .33 second, with the fastest again .18 second.

In the third sequence, the suspects faced the "officer" (camera) front-on, then spun 180 degrees and ran directly away. This took an average of .54 second, with the fastest recorded at .37 second.

Earlier studies have shown that once an officer perceives a threat--like the movement of the gun, in this case--it could take from .5 to 1.5 seconds for his brain to process that information and complete a reaction (firing his gun in self-defense).

Even starting with his or her gun in a ready position (at approximately waist level), the average officer needs .73 second to raise the weapon up to near eye level and squeeze off a round. Drawing a holstered sidearm, of course, takes longer (up to 1.9 seconds--or even longer depending upon the type of holster being used).

In experiments with the Minneapolis SWAT team, Lewinski discovered that the fastest an officer could bring a shotgun from a modified port position to a standing shoulder position and do "a point-and-shoot discharge in a subject's general direction" was .58 second.

"Obviously, subjects are much faster at [shooting] at an officer than officers are at reacting," Lewinski says.

What all this means, he concluded from his data, is that "if a subject on the street was raising a weapon to shoot an officer as the subject turned and ran and the officer reacted [by firing], the subject would be shot somewhere in the back" by the time the round hit him, if it hit him at all.

"The angle of bullet entry would vary depending upon the speed of the officer and the rotation of the subject, but all [rounds] would strike from a slight side/rear angle to a direct 90-degree rear entry."

Even if the officer had his gun up on target--aimed at the suspect's chest--when the suspect started to turn, enough of the rotation would be completed that the round would strike toward the suspect's back, Lewinski says.

You might wonder exactly what a civilian juror hearing all this might wonder: If a suspect can turn faster than an officer can shoot, why couldn't the officer see that this was happening and stop himself from pulling the trigger?

The answer is rooted in survival psychology--and is critical to understanding the full significance of Lewinski's ground-breaking study.

"When you get a signal that your life is in danger, your concentration is focused exclusively on the threat--on the movement of the gun in your direction, in this case," Lewinski says. He refers to this as "weapon focus." "You are not aware of shoulder or hip movement that would be signaling that the suspect is turning.

"Once your brain decides to shoot, it is virtually impossible to physically interrupt the completion of that action. You are concentrating on making your defensive action happen, on initiating fire as quickly as possible to save your life. You are not looking at whether some cue in the environment has changed."

Lewinski examined over 600 cases of shooting decisions by officers. He could find only one in which an officer was able to keep himself from firing at a suspect once he had decided to do so.

In that case, the officer jerked his wrist so his gun was twisted away from the suspect--but the shot still went off in an uncontrolled fashion in a different direction. In this case, into city traffic!

A second phase of Lewinski's study involved the phenomenon of fleeing suspects turning their torso to either side, pointing a gun back in the officer's direction, and shooting--in effect, "throwing" a shot back in the officer's direction. This is a common occurrence in foot pursuits, he says.

Again, because of the lightning speed with which a suspect can rotate his upper torso back to the front again and continue running, Lewinski found that "if an officer was in a weapon-drawn, ready position, could clearly distinguish the subject's weapon and fired as soon as [it] was visible, the officer's shot would hit the subject in the back while he would be rotated exactly opposite from where the officer said [the suspect was] when he decided to fire." The suspect would also be from 5.5 feet to 11 feet or more farther from the point he or she was when the officer decided to shoot.

In other words, the way the officer described the shooting would likely be very different from the way it turned out.

Already Lewinski has brought his study to bear in 2 lawsuits involving officers, in which he served as a legal consultant on the officers' behalf.

Yes I know of the report. and the BG wasn't shot in the back but was shot in the SIDE Thanks for the info..

Sure, why not? I can see that it was wise to delay the award to keep the "natives" from rioting (good tactics, after all), but didn't they tell him he was going to have to wait?

I mean the words this article uses: "anguish", "old wounds" etc. I'm sure that's an exaggeration. I doubt Officer May felt much anguish or that he was wounded from having to wait. Plus, I'm sure the lines about how bad he felt about having to shoot the thug are just PR. Kid points gun at cop, kid dies. Wax on, wax off. Still, the officer has my sympathy.

As for the mom of the thug, who cares? She raised a gangster, he got what was coming. Her feelings are unimportant. It's always the same thing anyway, young criminal gets caught or killed, mom goes on record with "he was a good kid, he would never do anything wrong". Pure fertilizer.

Too bad Spike Moss hasn't pointed any guns at cops.

UPDATE: 1-18-06 E-mail from Sgt. D.Madsen K-9 Minneapolis Police Dept.:



Mark- I have read about the turmoil that Office May is going thru relating to the shooting that occurred so many years ago. Officer May worked for me, and he is one of the finest men that I have ever had the privelege of knowing. He did what he had to do that cold winter night fourteen years ago. He deserved the medal of valor.


It seems that the real issue here is that of the character of the chief of the Minneapolis police department. Great leaders throughout history were great because they took a stand and stuck by it. Do you think General Patton would take away a medal awarded to his one of his men because of external pressure? Hell no he wouldn't. He was a man. Men take a stand and do what is right. They dont sway back and forth in the wind. No one wants a leader like that.

I hope officer May keeps the medal. It would please the chief if Officer May would give it back. It would give the chief an easy out. He would not have to get a backbone.

Sergeant Doug Madsen
Minneapolis Police 73/97

I can't imagine the rank and file in the MPLS PD have much respect for their chief. It's not about should he get the medal or not, it's about backing your team. Sounds like the chief is more interested in being politically correct. Great morale booster there.


Today's Strib has 3 letters to the editor that are worth a read- not that I endorse this paper. I particularly found the David Gross letter interesting.

I voted NO, but only because of the timing. He should have received the medal a LONG time ago. I don't understand why he would be decorated now for an incident 14 years ago.

TomK
Mpls, MN

Back then the Chief John Laux told Dan Not to take it. It wouldn't be P.C.

I really don't have a dog in this fight but if i were May i'd tell those political hacks in the PD and the city council to take their medal and put it where the sun don't shine. I realize this is much too subtle for most of that crowd, but, whatever.

It does seem like the awarding of the medal is at least partially motivated by a desire to tweak the administration (probably McManus specifically and Rybak some, too).

I kind of feel sorry for the awarded officer -- if he accepts the award, he puts himself at odds with the Chief and "the community" (I hear a foghorn whenever I see that word!), and at least partially allows himself to be used to further a political goal.

If he refuses the award, he appears less than gracious, risks offending rank-and-file officers (a risky biz for a street officer) and appears to be caving to political pressure from the aforementioned "community".

Maybe instead of the award he should ask for a gift certificate instead.

This should be really simple. If the problem is that the leadership of the city and the MPD believe that May killed somebody when he shouldn't have, and got away with it, MPD and city leadership should have long since gotten rid of him. If so, he's a bad example to other cops. The issue shouldn't be whether or not he gets a medal, but why he wasn't run off the force, if possible, or assigned to count the number of holes in the ceiling at MPD locker rooms over and over again, if not.

I don't think that's what happened.

If the problem is that the MPD and city leadership believe that a brave, dedicated police officer deserved (and eventually got) a medal for a heroic act, and some people have problems with it, the MPD and city leadership ought to be explaining that, over and over again, whenever it comes up. Not supporting an officer who they feel has done the right thing and gotten flack for it is a bad thing.

I don't think that's what's happening, either.

I think that they just don't care what the truth is, but worry about what the feelings are. I don't think it much matters to them whether or not what May did was right or wrong, but what matters to them is that it was politically inconvenient.

And that sucks.

The worst thing that the leadership can do is refuse to take a position -- to leave him for, quite literally years, on the street, while hanging him out to dry politically whenever the issue comes up.

Unsurprisingly, that's just the path that they've chosen.

It appears that Sgt. May has decided to return the medal.
A classy thing for him to do, under the circumstances, IMHO.
An acquaintance of mine knows his wife (shirt tail relative) and this is affecting his family quite a bit.
I suppose having all this PC crap going on takes away some of the honor of recieving this award.

MPD Leadership obviously has no cojones (IMHO)