Are We There Yet?
October 1-7, 2018
By Jay Edwards
jedwards@dailydata.com
Back in the spring of 2017 I was honored to be in the FBI Citizen’s Academy. I owe a thanks to my friend Jack Holt, who sent in a nice letter to the nominating committee about me. And it was all true, because not even a retired State Supreme Court Chief Justice would try and fool the FBI.
We attended seven evening classes and then a graduation ceremony with a dinner. I have my completion certificate and a photo with all my graduating classmates.
Now some of you, and you know who you are, don’t need to act any differently toward me. I won’t be leading any raids on your home or place of business. However, it would be good if you called me “G-man” from now on.
When I showed up that first night at the FBI building in west Little Rock, I was filled with a sense of awe for the history and the special agents who have walked those halls, and I recalled a kind man who used to live next door to me in the house I grew up in in North Little Rock. His name was Ed Brown and he had been one of those agents. My parents and all their friends called him Brownie and I still have the money clip with the knife and nail file he gave me long ago, with the inscription, “Arkansas Peace Officers Association.”
One time, our Lakewood neighborhood was put on high alert because one of the bad guys Mr. Brown had captured had escaped from prison. The man always swore he’d get even with Mr. Brown and I was ready each night, laying there in bed in my pajamas with my BB gun. (“Next to me in the blackness lay my oiled blue steel beauty.”)
I never got a clean shot at that desperado who I was sure was headed to our neighborhood to exact some cold hearted vengeance. He was captured soon after his escape and things got back to normal.
On simulator night at the academy, we all sat on the floor, listening to the agent’s instructions. We had just seen a film of an actual encounter between two agents and two armed suspects, the point and lesson being, when do you use deadly force? The simulator was on a big screen, and had actors in different scenarios. Each of us got a turn and we stood alone in front of the screen, with a virtual reality-like heavy gun, that we held in our hand, waiting to assess the situation and either react with force, or not.
Our first volunteer was fooled by the innocent look of a professional man standing in his office, who suddenly dove behind his desk and shot my classmate from behind his desk. Score: Criminals 1, Citizens Academy 0.
Our next volunteer stood there and listened, as a woman in a warehouse made excuses about what she was doing in the warehouse. She seemed agitated but my classmate was caught a little off guard I’m thinking because she was a woman. And he paid for it as she pulled a gun and blew him away. Criminals 2, Citizens Academy 0.
They were ready for another volunteer as my new friend Caroline Finley and I tried to get the other to go next. I lost and took my place in front of the simulator. After the first two casualties, I was on high alert, not unlike five decades before when I waited with my B.B. gun for Mr. Brown’s attacker to show up.
On the screen before me was a man who had been spotted behind a locked fence at an industrial company. Law enforcement had been called and I faced down the perp alone, ordering him forcefully to halt and show me his hands. He slowly walked toward his vehicle, where the hatchback was open. I yelled again, “Hold it scumbag!” Which the class liked. But he kept going and reached inside his car. I wasn’t going to be number three and unloaded my firearm on him. He was dead.
The agent training us let the film continue, so we would see what would have happened if I hadn’t shot. The screen showed the man rising out of the back of his car holding a cell phone, not the AK 47 I’d imagined.
In his summary the trainer thought I acted a bit quickly but believed that after my suspension (with pay) and an investigation, that I’d be cleared.
I thought again of Mr. Brown and hoped he would have been proud.
