The shooting of an autistic, disabled, non-verbal teen by police in Pocatello, Idaho
I generally am very supportive of law enforcement, but in this particular instance, I am, to put it mildly, perplexed.
Last Saturday, April 5, at approximately 5:25 p.m., four Pocatello police officers responding to a 911 call fired at least 12 rounds from a distance of less than two meters at a 17-year-old, physically impaired boy with autism and cerebral palsy. The teen, who was armed with a kitchen knife, was initially on the ground as the police arrived. When the police challenged him, guns raised; he stood up and made a move towards them from the other side of a chain-link fence, triggering the shooting.
The entire incident, spanning the time from the moment the police arrived until the fusillade of shots ended, lasted less than thirty seconds. The time that elapsed from the officers getting out of their cars to the first shots being fired was about 12 seconds, and audio analysis indicates that the responders then fired at least 12 rounds in just over 2 seconds. There is no evidence that the responders attempted to properly assess or de-escalate the situation before hitting the victim, Victor Perez (who is from Puerto Rico and comprehends little English), with nine of the twelve rounds fired.
Victor is currently in a local hospital on a ventilator. Victor's doctors report that he has experienced two clinical deaths followed by resuscitations and multiple surgeries, including a leg amputation. Doctors are currently monitoring his brain functions to determine whether he will ever emerge from his current comatose state.
I have, for several decades, run a consulting company with expertise in optical and acoustic forensics. Within minutes of this event, I was contacted by a party interested in determining the number of rounds fired and the amount of time elapsed during the shooting. I will share with you my analysis and conclusions.
The screenshot above is from the software that I used to analyze audio from a widely circulated video of the event. This audio clip is around 2 seconds in length, starting shortly before the first shot and ending after the last. I have numbered the peaks indicating shots for you. The unnumbered peaks are echoes (though in one case, there may have been two rounds fired at almost exactly the same time). In this particular acoustic environment, one would expect half-plane reflections from the ground and other multiple reflections from nearby houses in a densely populated residential area. This waveform is entirely consistent with what one would expect in these circumstances.
This screenshot is from an FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) of the first gunshot. An FFT of an acoustic event decomposes the signal into its spectral components. Unlike voice or music, gunshots lack harmonic content, instead consisting of broad-spectrum acoustic energy, also known as noise. That’s what is shown here. The dB scale on the left is relative and not indicative of the actual noise levels. This FFT is broadly consistent with the FFTs of the other eleven peaks, with minor differences in two of the peaks. Again, there is nothing particularly surprising here.
With two possible exceptions, these rounds all appear to be from small arms. Based on this information, I conclude that the actual number of rounds fired during this event was 12 (possibly 13 or 14) in slightly over 2 seconds, indicating multiple shooters. Doctors have since confirmed that the victim, Victor Perez, was struck nine times.
A GoFundMe page, which as of this morning has raised about $14k, has been set up to assist Victor and his family. I encourage you to help as you are able.
If I were testifying in court about this, my analysis would be a bit more lengthy and detailed, but not by a lot. I’d be surprised if the official report, when it comes in a week or so, says anything that’s much different. The relevant facts do not appear to be anything that could be a matter of future dispute. I think that what you see and hear in this video is pretty much what happened. Several other videos shot at the scene confirm the sequence of events. There does not appear to be any editing in the original video, and it encompasses the entire event. The 911 call has also been released and confirms that the responders should have known that the victim, in addition to being armed with a knife, was both impaired and speaking in Spanish.
That was the science stuff; now comes the rest.
As one might expect, the Pocatello Police Department and other city officials are under a great deal of local and national scrutiny over this unfortunate incident. As you might not expect, unless you lived here, they are not doing particularly well in responding. For one thing, Brian Blad, the mayor of Pocatello, appears to have disappeared without any trace.
I’ve written about the deft touch that Mayor Blad has used in dealing with serious local issues before. Going missing just might be the best outcome for all involved at this point. It’d be nice if the same thing happened during the next election.
Then there was the “press conference” held by PPD concerning the incident. When I logged in to watch, I was immediately struck by the following image.
In his opening remarks, Chief Schei stated that he would not be taking questions. I found this quite odd because there didn’t appear to be anyone in the room to ask questions. I sent a text to my friend, Ian Fennell, editor of the Idaho State Journal, who I knew would be in the loop. He confirmed that the media were there but confined to two groups on opposite sides of the room, away from the TV camera or dais. This is not SOP for most pressers.
If you listen to this presser, as I recommend, you'll notice the glaring lack of sympathy for the family or recognition of the tragedy's magnitude. This generally indicates two things. The first is that there is an attorney somewhere off camera holding one end of a length of fine gauge Spectra fishing line wrapped on the other end, tightly but inconspicuously, around the scrotum of the person doing the speaking.
The second is that somebody done effed up.
As anyone who has read my columns over the years knows, I am a consistent supporter of law enforcement. As recently as a few days ago, I wrote about imprisoned Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and my contention of his innocence. It takes a lot for me to get after cops. I believe that law enforcement officers have one of the most challenging jobs in the world, characterized by low pay, wild and unpredictable vacillations between boredom and intense circumstances, unwarranted disrespect from large segments of the body politic and media, and PTSD. It’s a really difficult job, and I respect anyone who does it well. I know many folks in LE, and I like and respect all of them.
As both a scientist and a longtime observer of controversy, I try to hold off on rendering a verdict on an issue until all the facts are in and all sides have had a chance to make their case. This practice has served me well, and I’m reluctant to abandon it now.
Yet…
In this particular incident, I’m really struggling to imagine a scenario, no matter how improbable, that explains this incident in a manner that vindicates the police officers involved. I’m just not seeing how this result squares up with any template for a reasonable LE response. This sentiment is widely shared in our community, where it’s more than just the usual suspects who are demanding answers from city officials and the police. I, myself, am responsible for a child with special needs. And while I doubt that the need will ever arise, might calling the police one day under duress result in their death? Many people in our community are now asking the same question. I understand that the gentleman who made the 911 call that started all of this now wishes that he had not. Who can blame him?
I know that our local police department is well-trained and generally very good. They’ve performed admirably in our community for years. I seriously doubt that this incident is the result of lack of training. If I had to guess what precipitated this tragedy based on what I know right now, it would indict more than just the police.
I’m guessing that none of the responding officers who discharged weapons in this incident are over 40 or have been in law enforcement long. Experienced officers deal with drunks, druggies, and crazy people all of the time without discharging their sidearms. PPD officers generally carry non-lethal alternatives to their firearms, and I personally know not a single one of them who would have lit up an obviously impaired teen in less than 20 seconds with lethal force. I believe the incident reflects a broader decline in competence across various professions due to postmodern standards of competence. It’s college graduates who can’t read, doctors who operate on the wrong limb, lawmakers who have no grasp of civics or history, and people on the street who can’t name the American president the year they were born. It’s the same reason that you might have to wait a while at the grocery store for someone to count out change if the cash register breaks.
You put together declining standards, lack of accountability, and the fact that it’s really difficult to attract top talent to LE in the wake of woke mobs successfully going after cops in the era of BLM, and it’s easier to come up with a plausible explanation for why these days it’s not uncommon for the police to stand around in active crime scenes and do nothing rather than risk making a poor decision.
Which, in this case, would have been the preferred outcome.
Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com
To say this is horribly tragic would be a gross understatement.
Same rough neck of the woods: https://substack.com/home/post/p-161074677