10/31/00 11:15 a.m.
“Awful but Lawful”
No easy answers in the latest LAPD controversy.

By Jack Dunphy*, an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department

y now everyone has heard the story: A law-abiding citizen is unaware he is pointing his replica handgun at a real police officer, and the police officer is unaware the man is a law-abiding citizen pointing a replica handgun. Now the man is dead, and the officer is forever burdened with having killed him.

By all accounts Anthony Dwain Lee was an honest and decent man. For reasons yet to be explained, he included as part of his Halloween costume a replica of a .45 caliber "Desert Eagle" handgun. The replica, apparently a prop used in television and film production, was shown to the media at a Parker Center news conference on Monday, and it was held up alongside a genuine handgun it was designed to resemble. Even in the harsh lights from the television cameras it was difficult to distinguish one from the other.

By all accounts Officer Tarriel Hopper is also an honest and decent man. At about 1 a.m. Saturday morning, he and his partner were called to the scene of a Halloween party to investigate a noise complaint. They were attempting to locate the party's host, and some guests directed them to the rear of the house. As he walked along the side of the house, Officer Hopper looked through a window and saw Mr. Lee pointing what appeared to be a large handgun at him. What Hopper surely thought in that split second was, "If I don't shoot him, he will shoot me."

The Special Investigations Division of the district attorney's office is charged with investigating incidents of this nature and determining whether the involved officers should be subject to prosecution. The term they apply to such tragedies as this is "Awful but Lawful." Simply put, the officer was faced with a threat that certainly seemed genuine at the time, and he responded as he had been trained. Only in retrospect does the enormity of mistake become clear.

To those who have suggested that the officers should have been less wary while responding to a routine call in an upscale part of town, I can only say that officers have been assaulted and killed in settings just as innocuous. Walk into the lobby of any LAPD station and look at the portraits on the wall. They are the faces of officers killed in action while assigned to that station. Some of those officers died because they hesitated, because they didn't believe the threat was real until it was too late.

Officer Hopper has been a cop for about three years. Maybe a more experienced officer would have reacted differently. Maybe not. I don't know how I would have reacted.

The incident I'm about to describe took less time than it will take you to read this paragraph. Years ago I was working patrol in South Central Los Angeles. My partner and I were about to take our dinner break at a restaurant on a busy street not far from the USC campus. There was a small mom-and-pop market next door to the restaurant, and I parked on the street immediately in front of it. I was watching the traffic as I got out of the car, as there wasn't much room between me and the passing cars. I suddenly heard my partner yell, "Gun!" I was still facing into the street and knew that whoever had the gun must have been somewhere behind me.

I drew my weapon, then turned to take cover behind the trunk of the police car. Running straight toward me through the doorway of the market was a man with a gun, not 20 feet away. I was in darkness, but the man was silhouetted in the fluorescent lights of the market's interior, and the gun was clearly visible in his right hand. In that instant I thought I had inadvertently parked in front of the market while a robbery was being committed inside, and now the suspect was attempting to escape. My partner, crouched down on the other side of the car, was screaming, "Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!" as I took aim and prepared to shoot.

As I was about to fire, the man stopped and dropped the gun on the sidewalk, saying, "It's just a toy!" I remember in that moment being struck by the incongruity of the man's voice — it was the voice of a child. But then, there was no incongruity at all, for it was in fact a child, no more than twelve-years-old. He was big for his age, but a child nonetheless, just having some horseplay with some people in the market.

I've relived that night hundreds of times since then, and I still don't know what kept me from shooting. Today that child is a young man, perhaps with children of his own. As he sees the accounts of Saturday's tragedy, maybe he'll teach his children a few things about guns. And about toy guns.

And maybe he'll recall that night years ago when two cops held their fire.

(*Jack Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management .)