Killing of 4 officers underscores risks police face when serving warrants
RALEIGH, N.C. — For society to function, arrest warrants must be issued to suspected criminals. But there is no guarantee of safety for police officers who knock on their door.
The grim risks came into stark relief Monday when four law enforcement officers in North Carolina were killed while serving an arrest warrant. The attack in Charlotte injured four other officers and became the worst attack on police in the US since 2016.
The tragedy underlines the limits of even the best-trained officers and the unpredictability of the alleged criminals who are captured.
“A lot of these guys don’t want to go back to prison,” said Tre Pennie, executive director of the National Fallen Officer Foundation. “And if it’s no surprise, they were given time to prepare. They will do everything they can to avoid going to prison again.”
Law enforcement can never control more than half of the situation, said Thor Eells, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association.
“They can be 100% right in everything they do,” he said, but “the suspect and/or suspects are responsible for the other 50%.”
Here’s what we know about the Charlotte shooting and other fatal shootings of officers serving warrants.
A U.S. Marshals Task Force, made up of officers from several agencies, arrived at a residential area to try to arrest Terry Clark Hughes Jr. capture, authorities said. He was wanted for possession of a firearm by an ex-felon and on the run in Lincoln County, North Carolina.
The task force was shot at as they approached the house, and Hughes, 39, was killed in the front yard, authorities said.
An AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a 40-caliber pistol were found at the scene. An AR-15 can penetrate traditional body armor and allows the shooter to “fire several rounds at our officers within seconds,” said Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings.
He said more than 100 spent bullets were recovered, although it was not clear how many were fired by the suspect. At least 12 officers also fired weapons.
Authorities in Charlotte will likely conduct a “post-event analysis” that will involve interviewing officers and neighbors, said Alexis Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami.
The lessons learned will be important to law enforcement agencies across the country, he said, to ensure officers “can prevent this from ever happening again.”
Piquero, a former director of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, said police issuing arrest warrants often happens as planned and goes “fairly smoothly.”
And while officers prepare for danger, shootings are inevitable because officers cannot predict how a suspect will react. All it takes is “a high-caliber weapon (and a) person with truly evil intentions,” he said.
Three officers were killed while serving arrest warrants in 2022, according to the FBI’s Center for the Study of Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted.
Their deaths accounted for 5% of the 60 law enforcement officers who died that year as a result of criminal incidents. These are defined by the FBI as deaths that are the “direct result of a deliberate and intentional act of an offender.”
In 2021 and 2020, two officers died each year while serving an arrest warrant, FBI data shows. Five officers died in 2019 while serving search or arrest warrants.
Recent fatal shootings include the 2022 killings of two deputies in Cobb County, Georgia. They were trying to arrest a man wanted on robbery charges when another man confronted them with a gun, authorities said. A gunfight ensued when the armed man refused orders to drop his weapon.
In 2021, a Houston police officer was killed and another was injured while trying to arrest a man on drug charges, police said. The man they tried to arrest was also killed.
In 2020, a Philadelphia police officer was shot and killed while serving a murder warrant at a home, officials said. Several people were arrested, among whom the fugitive was wanted.
Eells, of the National Tactical Officers Association, said police must consider many factors before issuing a warrant.
“There are so many tangible things involved. It’s like trying to put your arms around Jell-O and then pick it up,” he said. “It is not easy.”
One of the things officers want to know is the criminal history of the people being arrested.
‘Have they shown a tendency towards violence? Are they known to carry weapons?” said Eells, who served on the Colorado Springs Police Department for more than 30 years. “Are they involved in gang activity?”
Mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse are also valuable details. That includes any formal weapons training or known access to body armor.
Then there is the location of the suspect. Should the police go through a fence? Is there a ring camera? Is it an apartment complex with a lot of people around? Perhaps it would be safer to arrest the suspect outside the home.
“They will go through this planning process until they come to a decision where they believe they have mitigated the factors they can control regarding risk,” Eells said. “But there will always be an inherent risk. We can’t eliminate it.”