The Left’s Utterly Ridiculous Claim That Police Are Trained to ‘Shoot to Interview’

As a former uniformed law enforcement officer, federal agent, and law enforcement instructor, I’m growing increasingly frustrated with the dangerous naiveté within the far-left activist and “talking-head” community when it involves discussing police use-of-force incidents.

After nearly every police-involved use-of-force incident, some far-left activist or news commentator feels the need to rush in front of the cameras and, without even knowing the facts, spout off about the incident. Much of this heated and uninformed anti-police rhetoric inspires the same kind of rhetoric in return in defense of the police. (I have engaged in some of these heated debates on camera when I felt that the police are unjustly being attacked.) As a result, no substantive discussion occurs — only a yelling match.

But, what I saw last night set a new low for liberal commentary on law enforcement. What happened on Fox News’ “The Kelly File” was inexcusable and dangerous.

As I sat in front of the television, relaxing after completing my Facebook Live session, I watched liberal commentator Nomiki Konst say something about police officers so outrageous that I nearly choked on the Seltzer I was drinking. Host Megyn Kelly asked Konst to comment on the Ohio State University knife attacks and the since-deleted tweet by former vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine that inaccurately implied the attacker had a gun.

The conversation quickly went off the rails as Konst, unbelievably, implied that the life-saving actions of heroic OSU police officer Alan Horujko may have been an exercise in poor judgement. If you’re saying “What!?” then join the chorus. Now I have met Nomiki before and found her to be both affable and relatable and do not intend this to be, in any way, a personal attack.

Konst went on to state that non-deadly force could have been used against the knife-wielding, murderous savage because, in her words: “The FBI trains in situations like this and they want to make sure the attacker is alive so they can question him, especially if there’s some sort of terrorist affiliation.” She added, “There’s a lot of training behind this. You find a way to injure them, harm them, knock them down, still keep them alive so you can question them.”

Fascinating. This is breaking news if true.

I, along with the legions of local, state, and federal law enforcement agents would be astonished to discover that decades of use-of-force training — designed to STOP a subject from causing serious physical injury or death to himself or others — had changed and that the new policy was “shoot to interview.”

To be sure I hadn’t heard Konst wrong, I rewound the segment and listened again and, to my chagrin, my ears were working just fine. To their credit, host Megyn Kelly and co-panelist Dana Loesch immediately threw the BS flag on this nonsensical and dangerous assertion and forced Konst back on her heels. But the damage had already been done.

Friends, what happened in this cable news segment is the reason why we can’t have a civil discussion in this country about understandably heated intersections such as race and police use-of-force. Not only was Konst grossly misinformed about how police are trained to use force in a situation requiring it, but she was also spouting the exact opposite position many of her fellow, liberal activists and commentators have taken in the past when they stoked the flames of racial division after a use-of-force incident involved a minority.

For example, here’s a headline from an editorial piece written just a few days ago discussing police use-of-force incidents, “Black Lives Matter 2016: Why Do Police Shoot To Kill? How Officers Are Trained In The Use of Force.”

So, liberal activists and commentators, which one is it? Are police trained to “shoot to kill” or to “shoot to interview”? How can we have a serious conversation in this country when liberal activists ask us to reevaluate and change a policy they don’t even understand? Or do they understand it, and they’re just changing their talking points to fit a new narrative designed to sway public opinion in their direction?

Either answer is troubling. Do you see how a productive conversation is impossible given that we aren’t all talking about the same things? People who are trained law enforcement professionals are talking about apples, while the liberal commentators and activists are talking about oranges from Jupiter (or Jupiter being orange, depending on the direction of the political winds of the moment).

As I said previously, I have met Nomiki in the past, and I don’t want to impugn her motives, but this was irresponsible at best. Misinforming the public on such an important issue such as the training of our nation’s police officers in an effort to increase cynicism against the police — in a time where police-community relations are already struggling in many areas of the country — is incredibly irresponsible.

She owes OSU police officer Horujko and the entire law enforcement community an apology. (For more from the author of “The Left’s Utterly Ridiculous Claim That Police Are Trained to ‘Shoot to Interview'” please click HERE)

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