LAGRANGE The first bullet hits the thigh. Next to the groin and the third next to the navel. 39 years old Ronald McCormickin an extract from a jungle knife flips as he shortens to the ground, on a September night in the small town of LaGrange, Georgia.
A few meters away, the police are still standing in a tense position, the gun raised.
29 years old David Horseman breathing is intense. A former Marine who has worked as a police officer for five years and has even seen war, he has just shot a man for the first time in his life.
– Shooting a person does not please me, but if I am forced to do so, I will not hesitate.
The knife wanted for several serious crimes survived and it was no coincidence.
Namely, Horseman had recently been trained to shoot an imminent danger first into his lower body.
Trigger and paralyze, don’t kill
LaGrange, with a population of about 30,000, is a sleepy little town in the state of Georgia, about an hour’s drive from Atlanta. There is a police shooting range on the outskirts of the city. There has recently been a new attitude towards the use of firearms by local police.
“Full marks,” said a gun and firearms trainer at LaGrange Police Department Joshua Clower. He marks the bullet holes that appeared on the target in the shape of a human body with a thick marker.
A police shooting exercise is underway. Chief Commissioner Dale Strickland has fired fourteen times at the target’s yellow-green lower body. Four bullets pierced the red upper body and two shots hit the head.
The purpose of the exercise is to paralyze the threatening person by first shooting down, into the pelvic region, groin and thighs, and only if necessary step by step up to the lungs and heart.
“The intention is to reduce the likelihood that the shot is deadly,” Clower says.
One might suddenly think this is self-evident, but at least not in the United States.
Traditionally, police officers are taught to shoot immediately into the upper body, which houses the most important organs for human vital functions, and which is easiest to hit.
LaGrange is reportedly the only police facility in the entire country to practice less lethal gun use.
– We originally thought the idea was crazy. It was completely at war with how we had been trained in the past, says Clower, who began investigating the matter by order of the police chief.
The result was a 500-page bump that says a bullet fired at the pelvis or lower body may stop the approaching threat more effectively than a shot at the chest. At the same time, the chances of survival increase.
Estimate: Police shoot about 50 grounds each year
The man behind the reform is the sheriff of the deep south with forty years of experience, Louis Dekmar.
However, the idea of reforming the use of firearms arose abroad.
– Twenty years ago, I became acquainted with the practices of the Israeli police and found that, unlike us in the United States, they are being taught to shoot at less dangerous parts of the body.
Over the years, Dekmar ran into the same practices in other countries.
In the era of mobile video, Dekmar began to scramble.
He went through numerous videos of shooting situations in the United States. In them, police officers who raised their guns reassured men who were behaving menacingly, equipped with a percussion or blade weapon, and were mentally ill.
– Police resorted to the practices learned in the training and fired at the upper body. Several times, police would have had time to aim for a less deadly body part.
Dekmar estimates that police shoot about fifty people each year on questionable grounds.
Cases that have received widespread attention in recent years, such as George Floydin murder as well Breonna Taylorin and Jacob Blaken shootings have eroded the confidence of black Americans in police in particular.
– When people see these shots, it’s shocking to them, just like me.
Renewing the shooting instructions may be the key to better, according to Dekmar.
Dekmar believes public confidence in the police could grow if the police could show that the shooting was intended to be paralyzed. The situation is even better if the shot survives.
– On the other hand, it generally improves our ability to perform effective policing.
LaGrange police have used the gun only twice since the reform took effect.
The practice has not taken a breeze, although interest can be found
The experiment of a small police station has aroused a lot of interest in police districts around the country. More than a hundred police departments or other authorities have sent representatives to explore Dekmar’s ideas.
– Some have been genuinely interested. Others have come so they can say they are familiar with the matter. Then there are some who have come to express their opposition to reform.
Critics say the new shooting instructions endanger the lives of police. Critics say it is difficult to hit the lower limbs or lower body in a fast and dynamic situation. Still, at least LaGrange’s new grips don’t seem to have spread anywhere else.
– It’s nothing. It also took me ten years to understand, Dekmar says optimally.
Police: “I don’t want to deprive anyone’s life”
At the LaGrange Police Department, 85 law enforcement officers have received new shooting training. Half a dozen of them stand one Thursday night against the back wall of the command-sharing room with their right hand raised to their side.
In the Southern Bible Zone, the shift begins with prayer and flag light.
– I like my job. It’s variable. You never know what you’ll face during a shift, he says Cody Bellthe son of a hometown police officer for the fourth year.
In the evening patrol, Bell takes a shotgun in addition to a service gun, which he loads before throwing it into the trunk of a police car.
– Yes, this is scary at times, but you have to learn to live with it.
Cody Bell has had to pull out his weapon several times during his career, but he has never fired it yet.
– I’ve been lucky in that sense. I really don’t want to deprive anyone’s life.
See more of Bell’s comments in the video below:
Bell was initially skeptical of the police chief’s new shooting instructions. He reflected on decision-making in fast-paced situations and how difficult it is to aim at hard-to-hit body parts in an emergency.
– I was afraid it would be an extra mental burden for us. Police could start questioning their own solutions.
Bell changed his mind after attending the training. Now he understands that shooting in the lower limbs, when the use of lethal force is justified, is not a requirement but an additional option.
– Perhaps some of the police shootings in the big media would have gone differently if this practice had been used elsewhere.
“I’m afraid they’ll shoot me”
There is no trust in the police in the poor and predominantly black neighborhoods of LaGrange.
– If a police car drives past this, I’ll turn my face away. Because I have a hoodie and I look like this, they immediately think I’m a gang, he says Isaac Lawsonwho admits to fear the police.
– They are too crooked to use a gun if, for example, they stop the car and someone makes the wrong move.
Lawson has heard nothing about the local police’s new gun instructions. He hopes the police will be able to resolve the situation more often, even with a gas spray or remote paralyzer.
– However, not all cops are bad, Lawson estimates.
A couple of blocks away Sheila Merriweather sitting on a dilapidated porch with her male friend.
Merriweather also avoids police, which she thinks harasses poor residents.
– They follow people walking down the street in a car as if waiting for them to do something illegal sooner or later.
Merriweather does not hesitate to admit that as an African American, she is afraid of police bullets.
– I am afraid that I will find myself in a situation where the police suspect that I have done something and that the situation will get out of hand and they will shoot me. After all, everyone is afraid of it.