"It's horrible," says Marilyn Head. "I think it's a terrible situation." Head works with Corpus Justice, Inc. and advocates prosecuting officers involved in the questionable use-of-deadly-force cases. "These officers are dealing with teenagers. The last thing they should be considering is a gun."

 

 

 

And that is not surprising to lawyers who've handled such suits against the police. "It's like going up against a big corporation," says attorney Rick Forlano.

Forlano represented the Houston woman who was a passenger in the car her husband was driving when he refused to stop for police, got the car stuck in a thicket.

Then she told them she was going to get out. "She told them verbally," adds Forlano.

But for some reason the police opened fire wounding the woman, not the driver. "Even if they were trying to stop the vehicle," he says. "Shooting the passenger was not going to do that."

The suit was eventually dropped, but Forlano says had it gone to trial he would have attacked what officers aren't taught. "And that's where I don't think they have enough training," he says. "They're too quick to fire because they have not been adequately trained, again, by the department in terms of the use of deadly force."

But many area officers are trained with simulators to help them learn when to draw their weapons and when to shoot.

Rex White has been there for real, wounding a fugitive back when he was a patrol officer, before he became an instructor. But did he think it the right thing to have done? "You bet," says White. "But that's something the officer has to live with. Deadly force is an absolute last resort."

White was an expert witness on the Luis Torres case, the man who died during this struggle with Baytown police. White analyzed the tape and testified that despite appearances the police were following proper procedure.

It may be one more example of officers faced with tough decisions that can be easily criticized, sometimes for good reason, and sometimes maybe not.

In light of the recent shootings critics have renewed calls for a more powerful Citizens Review Committee to independently investigate the police department's use-of-deadly-force.

 

Up Close: Questioning HPD's use of deadly force

"Deadly force is an absolute last resort"

By Dave Fehling - Ch 11 News - 12/17/03

HOUSTON -- It happened again just this week -- a Houston police officer used deadly force on a man in Montgomery County. And in the past two months two other shootings took the lives of teenagers.

There are Web sites devoted to tracking the cases of people killed or wounded by Houston area police. And there are dozens.

Among the most recent additions are two of the youngest, 15-year-old Jose Vargas and 14-year-old Eli Eloy Escobar.

Cops, kids and gunfire. They're all tragic cases that inevitably trigger the blame game. What, if anything, could have been done to prevent them? 11 News began by asking a teenager who's been there.

Tremayne Williams was 16 when Houston officers approached him as Williams walked down Tuam Street, carrying, he admits, a gun.

His back was to the officers. "Yes, sir," says Williams. And they shot him running away. "Yes, sir," he adds.

One officer said Williams pointed the gun at them, but Williams says no, he'd already ditched the gun, and, he says being teenager, he panicked and took off running. "I'm going this way," says Williams. "I'm trying to get away, I'm trying to get away, I'm not trying to hurt him."

And it was then Williams says one of the officers fired at him with a shotgun and the proof of that, he says, are the wounds in his back.

The officer was cleared by the Houston Police Department. And when Williams sued the city he got only a couple thousand dollars in a settlement.