Most law enforcement officers go through their whole career without shooting anyone.

A handful get into more than one shooting — as many as four and five for two San Diego police officers.

Why this is the case, and whether the public should be concerned about officers who become involved in multiple shootings, isn’t easy to answer.

Police officials say each shooting should be evaluated on its own for legal justification, without regard to prior incidents.


Officers have no control over what calls they go to, or the ultimate actions of a person who appears armed and poses a direct threat to the public or the officers, San Diego police Lt. Scott Wahl said.

Critics of police use of deadly force, on the other hand, believe the officer’s personality and training have more to do with his or her willingness to pull a gun and use it.

Attorney Dan Gilleon, who has represented many families of those killed by law officers in San Diego County, said officers who are “repeat shooters” should be seen as “bad and dangerous.”

“These officers have personality flaws in my opinion, and seem to believe they live in the old west where you can settle disputes like Wyatt Earp,” Gilleon said in an email response to questions on the subject.


He called them “adrenaline junkies” who chose riskier assignments in SWAT, gang enforcement, narcotics and K9 units.

The Rev. Shane Harris, president of the San Diego chapter of the National Action Network, a civil rights organization, said when officers get into several shootings, “We need to be questioning an officer’s ability to de-escalate a situation and the officer’s temperature in patrolling our communities.”

One study found that an officer who is involved in one shooting is 51 percent more likely to get involved in another within a certain period of time than is an officer who has not shot anyone.

Charles Wilhite, assistant professor and director of the Criminal Justice program at Asuza Pacific University in San Diego, said the research that came up with that figure couldn’t answer “why.”


“Some cops are just s—t magnets,” Wilhite said. “There are just certain people who end up in circumstances that others don’t.”

He said researchers at the University of Riverside found no relationship between an officer’s personal characteristics and being involved in shootings.

The study included 186 shootings by some 300 deputies in the Riverside Sheriff’s Department in 15 years between 1990 and 2004. About 28 percent of the deputies were involved in multiple shootings.

Researchers suggested that a beat assignment into neighborhoods where residents are less compliant with police could be a factor. Another could be that an officer who has shot someone may become more sensitive to future risks and dangers, and be quicker to react with a gun another time.


A small number of officers around San Diego County have been involved in multiple shootings over the last several decades.

Last weekend, San Diego police Officer Richard Butera killed a man who was advancing with a knife after breaking into a Point Loma home. It was Butera’s fourth fatal shooting since 2013, all found legally justified.

San Diego police Detective Phillip Bozarth’s career has included five fatal shootings, all cleared by the District Attorney’s Office.

San Diego officers Gordon Leek, Carlos Garcia and Stephen Paul Williamson were involved in three shootings each. National City police Officer John Murray was involved in two shootings that left two dead and one injured. Border Patrol Agent John Roberts was involved — with other officers and agents — in two shootings where five men were shot.


Under California law, officers may use deadly force if they are reasonably in fear for their own lives or the lives of others.

Officer-involved shootings are investigated on several tracks. Homicide investigators in the jurisdiction where the shooting occurred present the facts to the District Attorney, who determines whether criminal charges should be filed against the officer. An FBI agent sits in on that evaluation.

Within the officer’s department, internal affairs investigators look for violations of policy and procedures that might lead to discipline. Disciplinary measures are not typically made public.

“The community has to trust that officer-involved shooting investigators do a very thorough job, very unbiased,” said Nancy Bohl-Penrod, a psychotherapist and director of The Counseling Team International based in San Bernardino, who works with first-responders after traumatic incidents.


She and the team counseled officers who responded to the mass shootings in San Bernardino two years ago and Las Vegas in October.

Bohl-Penrod said officers involved in a second or third shooting relate fears of being judged badly by the public, the media, their families and their agency administrations.

“If they end up killing a really bad guy, they feel a sense of relief that the person is no longer on the street,” she said. “But there is no joy in it. It’s a shame that a two-second decision (to shoot) can mean years of torment.”

Former police officer Lance LoRusso, a civil liability defense attorney in Georgia who also serves as a police union attorney, said some officers quit law enforcement after a shooting.


“Lately, officers are more concerned that their administrations lean toward discipline, that they’ll be sacrificed on a political altar,” LoRusso said. “That’s why we’re having recruiting problems around the country. And they fear being prosecuted for doing nothing wrong. A plaintiff’s attorney will argue they are ‘cops out of control.’”

He said if an officer is cleared of multiple shootings and stays on the job, the community should view him or her as a dedicated public servant.

“I think most people don’t understand about the use of deadly force,” said criminal justice Professor David A. Klinger, at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He was a police officer in Los Angeles and Redmond, Wash., in the 1980s.

“If it’s a ‘good’ shooting, the analysis stops there. If it’s a questionable shooting, we have concerns,” Klinger said. “I’ve interviewed hundreds of officers involved in shootings. It just so happens they are in the right — or wrong — spot at the right time.”


One officer he knows has been involved in seven shootings, and sees them all as happenstance, Klinger said.

Wilhite, at Azusa Pacific University, said he believes officers deserve greater scrutiny after repeated shootings.

“But that doesn’t mean they’re doing something wrong,” Wilhite said.

He said the public doesn’t always understand why one officer at a tense scene may draw a gun while another holds a Taser. That’s a police tactic to make both levels of force instantly available — not a sign that the officers read the level of danger differently.


“De-escalation involves time, and space,” Wilhite said. “I’m a big proponent. It saves lives. But we have to recognize that sometimes the situation doesn’t allow that.”

He said in reading a media account of Butera’s shooting in Point Loma, he noted that a second officer fired a Taser as Butera fired his gun.

“That tells me they both sensed the same threat and both fired,” he said. “These dynamic situations are dictated by the person who was shot. The public thinks one officer was meaner than the other. That’s not the case.”

As a Riverside sheriff’s deputy, he sometimes saw rookies wait so long to avoid using force that they ended up using greater force to control a suspect.


He said research shows that in 80 to 90 percent of confrontations where deadly force would have been justified, officers don’t use it.

“Officers are no different from anybody else,” Wilhite said. “They make decisions like any other person does. It’s amazing how many times they’re right.”


pauline.repard@sduniontribune

Twitter: @pdrepard