THE PERFECT STORM

The perfect storm.That is how Hartford Police Officer Dom Agostino described yesterdays events on Westland Street. Officer Agostino called me this morning to describe his actions to me after numerous comments had been made on this Blog critiquing his actions during the incident.

I have never met Agostino, but I was aware of who he was due to an Internal Affairs investigation regarding him from several years ago.  That may have been a bad start when I began hearing he was the officer who first arrived  on Westland Street yesterday to an active shooter scene.

Agostino asked if he could talk to me and address his response. Since I( am still trying to unravel the situation in my own mind, combined with the numerous phone calls I have received with all  of the different theories and scenarios as to how it should have been handled in a perfect situation.

The problem is nothing about yesterdays incident was routine or complying with any Academy role playing scenario.

Agostino seemed to be troubled by all of the events, but then again, who wouldn't be. He said he hadn't been able to get much sleep last night as the slow motion events kept playing over in his mind.

Agostino described it as the "perfect storm" for chaos. He heard the shots fired call, responded to the area and as he turned onto Westland street he saw two SUV's racing directly toward him. He said the front seat occupants of one car were wearing masks and one of the SUV's threw that car into reverse to elude him and backed up Westland Street. The scene was unraveling in split second timing at that point and Agostino was trying to comprehend everything in the greater picture and making sense of a senseless situation.

Agostino , driving forward up Westland St. was pursing the second shooting vehicle as it backed up the street quickly. At about the time he saw the grey car at the curb with two more shooters taking aim at the fleeing SUV. In a split second he saw the subsequent victim, later identified as Yvonne Smith, entering the street into the path of the fleeing car.

He explained the couple of seconds we can see in the video where he is stationary alongside the standing shooters. At that moment the fleeing vehicle hit Yvonne Smith and propelled her body into the air and through the intersection .Agostino recalls quickly looking from the flying body to the shooters along side him, trying to process what to do next. A situation hopefully none of us are ever in and having to witness and make those decisions and hopefully none of our trained police officer's have to either.

I know it is easy to criticize Agostino's actions, I did it myself. I am not sure even a computer or the best trained Police Officer could process the events that quickly and make the perfect decision. I had the  video on a computer screen and it took me several views to make sense of the silver vehicle by the curb and the two occupants going into their shooting stances and figuring all the threats out. Imagine a Police officer coming upon a wildly confusing situation unwinding in real time before your eyes and trying to control that situation perfectly while analyzing everything happening, trying to chase the suspects, not crash your cruiser, not get yourself shot and if you return fire not to injure any innocent bystanders out in the area. As you human brain is processing all of that information , you see a body hurled into the air by the fleeing car.

I am not sure even the fastest computer could analyze all of that information and come up with a perfect scenario in the quick time frame  that Agostino had to make the same conclusions .I am not sure it is necessary, but I would love to sit down in a room with people, or even a group of Police Officers and play the video for them and see how they would process their solutions and the "what if's". Hopefully this will be a learning tool for our Police Officers to prepare them for the next time a similar situation occurs. And sadly I think the next time will not be too far off unless we get a handle of the violence on our streets.

Finally, I think I did look at the video and drew conclusions as to the situation based upon my knowledge of previous incidents with Officer Agostino. This was a perfect storm situation and I am not sure even the most seasoned, well trained officer could have or should have acted differently. And I honestly pray that none of my police officer friends, or any police officer find themselves in similar situations.  And I don't think I have ever done this before or actually felt the need to do it, but to Officer Agostino, I apologize for judging your actions in the comfort of my computer screen hit play rewind and pause reviewing the video in slow motion, unlike what you were confronting in split second real time.

I appreciate your calling me and having the opportunity hear your version and your sincerity seemed to come through for me. I hope your department will help you and other officers dealing with similar situations to process these events properly.

Before we were done, I asked Officer Agostino a question and told him if he didn't want to answer me I understood. I asked him as the scene was unfolding, did he ever  stop to think or delay his response because of liability or what would happen if he fired back or even rammed the car with his cruiser . His response was a quick "No".