Editor's Note: Just days after the shooting death of John Dinsmore, I called on Moab resident Dirk Vaughan for some advice and a professional opinion. Dirk was a street cop in Colorado for 13 years, serving with the Denver, Vail, and Aurora Police Departments. His police employment file reveals a highly trained, professional law enforcement officer who was frequently commended for exemplary conduct in extremely intense and critical situations. He was once involved in a shooting that required an external investigation by the state's Bureau of Investigation and was exonerated.
Throughout these past rather intense two months, I have always appreciated his honesty and candor and intelligence, even when we disagreed. He was reluctant, at first, to make a contribution in writing to this story and I could hardly blame him. But ultimately, Dirk felt compelled to express his concerns and doubts about this genuine tragedy.
On behalf of this publication, its readership, and the citizens of Moab, I'd like to express to him our gratitude...JS
I drive past the home of John and Holly Dinsmore almost every day. Except for the anonymous waves that all friendly neighbors exchange I did not know John at all. I do not know anyone who is a city or county law enforcement officer and have no quarrel whatsoever with any individual in the law enforcement community. Before I can comment on the events surrounding John's death I must alleviate some anticipated concerns.
When I was a cop I worked the street as a patrolman. It was what I loved and did best. I was nobody's narc and nobody's supervisor. With no intent to boast I can honestly claim to have handled more incidents involving every degree of verbal, physical, and deadly force, that an experienced police officer must eventually employ, than I can accurately count or remember. I left police work well respected, under totally voluntary and honorable circumstances. Actually, I ran to the surrounding wilderness and small town security of Moab like a scalded dog after participating in the high speed pursuit and professionally restrained arrest of a cocaine crazed armed robber who threw down his weapon and begged for mercy after leaving a friend and fellow officer dying on the pavement of a north Aurora trailer park with a bullet in his brain. After that something died in me as well and within short order I was a civilian. Fortunately, through the therapy of wife, family, and wilderness, something was also born.
As much as is possible, I believe I can comment knowledgeably and objectively on the problems that exist in the shooting of John Dinsmore. I do so with a degree of reluctance tempered with some obligation as a concerned member of the community. I hope that all who read my words will realize that this is costing me something that would take too many more words to explain and therefore consider it as I have tried to write it, objectively and without prejudice or malice.
There can be no doubt that the single individual most able to quickly and effectively minimize the circumstances that resulted in his death was John himself. Regardless of what else will be said, that point should not be discounted or forgotten. I am also in complete agreement with County Attorney Benge that the statutory elements which justify deadly force were in place. In other words what occurred was the quick and lawful shooting by an officer in the performance of his duty of a person with a deadly weapon who posed an immediate threat to that officer. But the job of the County Attorney is strictly to consider the criminal aspects of the officer's performance. He has nothing to do with the requirements of civil law or nationally recognized rules of police procedure.
This incident must therefore be viewed from the aspect of what is known as necessary use of force in relation to the tactics employed to deal with the situation. Any police officer trained and accredited by a state or federal institution in the last quarter century would know that the expectation regarding use of force is as follows:
An officer may only use that degree of force necessary to effect an arrest or control a situation while still maintaining an acceptable degree of safety for officers and citizens, up to and including the use of deadly force.
This nationally accepted principle requires that officers exhaust all means that are reasonably and safely available to them prior to escalating from a lesser degree to a higher degree of force. Any rookie that failed to know this rule by heart should never have made it out of the academy. Any officer that consciously or consistently fails to uphold this ideal should not be a police officer and it is the rule by which I will comment on this shooting.
The first big problem with what happened pertains to what is known as exigent circumstances, defined as requiring immediate aid or action. Since the five responding officers arrived almost simultaneously their tactical possibilities were constant from the start. The wife was in no immediate danger and John's friend was controlled and removed from the immediate area. If the officers had moved back, away from the effective range of a knife, John could only have injured himself. A distance of at least the approximate width of a residential street would have required John to make a definite rush of several paces to reach the officers. That amount of distance was available to Sgt. Wiler but he never left his position which was essentially right at the foot of the driveway. There is nothing in the reports to indicate that any of the officers gave John enough space to see if his threats were bluff or if he was truly willing to cross a significant space to get at one of them.
The property where this occurred is tactically ideal for a limited number of officers to restrict John's movement with a wider spread containment perimeter and strategic use of available cover. The house is surrounded by street on two sides and a large backyard with no residence within range of immediate danger. The only other home that adjoins the property is on the side opposite to where the incident occurred. From his shooting position Sgt. Wiler was only a few paces from a police car which would have forced John to come around the front or over the top of the vehicle to reach him. There is a large boulder, somewhat smaller than a Volkswagon near the driveway several feet from the position of other officers who never used it as cover.
The absolute number one factor that provides officer safety in a critical situation and presents the officer with options is cover, cover, and more cover. Other than the muzzles of their weapons none of these officers sought protection behind any available barrier. Is it reasonable that no one took steps to reduce the tension of this situation and buy some time by moving back into the space that was available to them? Essentially the exigent circumstance that the officers created was an immediate danger to their own safety which was in turn created by their unreasonable refusal to move away from that danger.
The use of a shotgun in this situation is justified and had the potential for providing an excellent tactical advantage with proper use. A shotgun is a two handed weapon that reduces an officer's mobility and ability to focus on options other than the wielding of the weapon. The officer wielding the shotgun should have been behind a position of cover and preferably not verbally involved with John at all. With all of the officers at a safer distance from John, the weapon could be used with the same devastating effect while providing an extreme measure of security, especially against a knife. With the officer in command of the scene standing in direct line with John at such a close distance, away from any cover, focusing on aiming the weapon, and issuing the same basic commands over and over, he basically reduced to zero his ability to responsibly command, tactically assess, and adapt to the demands of the situation and ultimately use a lesser degree of force to control it.
John's treatment after he had been shot is lacking in professionalism and basic common sense to the point of absurdity. It is totally understandable that he was initially handcuffed due to the reflex of standard procedure. Once it became apparent that his wounds were incapacitating and life threatening and especially after medical personnel requested the handcuffs be removed the humane reaction would have been to comply. Giving the officers the benefit of the doubt by assuming that they merely wished to guarantee the control of a dangerous prisoner they had just been forced to shoot, then it is even more absurd that someone did not accompany John to the hospital. There were more than enough officers to control and preserve the crime scene, at least one could have been spared. You never ever lose sight of a prisoner. That is a fundamental rule in law enforcement. I once flew in an airlife helicopter with a suspect, who had been shot, for this very reason. The fact that no officer was assigned to stay with John is further evidence that there was basically no command/supervisory presence at the scene.
It is undeniable that Sgt. Wiler bears the most responsibility for the way in which this situation was handled. He was the ranking officer with jurisdiction and command of the scene and he is the one who fired the fatal shot. Even with that responsibility in mind, the apparent lack of communication between officers, possibly aggravated because they work for different agencies, is truly alarming. I am not saying that this was an easy situation to handle. Even if all the procedures and precautions I mentioned had been used, John Dinsmore might well have continued to push these officers to the point of deadly force. But he deserved that chance. All citizens deserve that chance and it is every sworn police officer's duty to provide them with every reasonable and prudent action the officer can take before the use of deadly force.
It is a mistake for any of you reading this to think that this incident has nothing to do with you because you cannot imagine yourself behaving like John Dinsmore. However extreme the incident may have been, it is indicative of a law enforcement community with problems. I have no idea what the level of ongoing training or cross training between agencies is for officers in the Moab Valley. I do not know the degree of discipline they are subjected to by their Chief or Sheriff. I can say something without any doubt. The chief of any law enforcement organization must be a fair but stern disciplinarian and utterly ruthless at weeding out any officers who display incompetence, a consistent lack of professionalism or any lack of integrity. Andy of Mayberry would have been great as a fishing buddy or a softball teammate but he would have been virtually useless and even a liability to a real police department in the real world with real problems. I have worked with good cops and bad cops, mostly good. In a community that pays a decent salary and in return has high expectations and full accountability for its officers, the good cops flourish and the bad ones go away. It is up to this community to decide and make known how they wish to be policed.