Bring Out Your Dead And Check Your Assumptions

On a warm summer night we were dispatched to a third floor apartment for a report of a shooting, with little to no information. (This is known as par for the course). But it wasn’t the first body that startled us, it was the second.  Ah, midnight shift. So much like a box of chocolates — only worse.

My coworkers and I parked a couple of houses away before making our approach on foot. We used the exterior stairs at the back of the building that led us upward from porch to porch until we arrived at the third floor landing. I was in front.

Making Entry

At the top, I stopped and listened to see if I could pick up any commotion coming from inside the apartment, but the background noise of the city night made it difficult. I peered through the broken Venetian blinds hanging crookedly over the nine-light window of the back door. Through a gap in the blinds I could see a dimly lit room and a man’s body on the floor, face down, in a pool of blood. It looked like the guy’s face had exploded, and from where I stood, it was obvious he wasn’t coming down for breakfast anymore.

We talked things over outside, came up with a hasty plan, and then knocked and announced. After receiving no response, we forced the door and made entry. The back door led to the kitchen area which was adjacent to the living room. I cleared left toward the living room while the other guys began clearing right toward the bedrooms. I stepped carefully to avoid the dead guy on the living room floor and then panned left toward the deep corner.

Dead As A Door Nail

My eyes swept over the coffee table, about half the couch, and then stopped. There was a person sitting on the couch facing toward me, arms and legs splayed, and head tipped back. The person look bloated with waxy black skin — the classic “been dead a while in a hot room” look. I saw no obvious signs of trauma, but he sure looked dead as a door nail with decomposition well on its way.

Two bodies; one fresh, the other not even close. What was going on here? With the apartment clear we secured it and stood a few feet from both bodies to discuss next steps. And then it moved.

Feeling Better

The body on the couch shifted slightly, then slowly tipped its head forward and opened its eyes.  The whites of both eyes stood out in stark contrast to the waxy, dark skin. The eyes blinked and shifted back and forth taking in the room. When he saw us and the exploded head on the floor he gasped and we jumped.

What the deuce?!

In hindsight all I can think about is the movie Monty Python And The Holy Grail when the guy with the cart full of dead bodies makes his way through the village ringing the bell and repeating, “Bring out your dead!” Then one of the villagers tries throwing an old man on the pile of bodies, but the old man says, “I’m not dead yet! I’m feeling better!” This guy clearly wasn’t dead yet and quite possibly was feeling better.

Long Story Short

The fact that he wasn’t dead yet prompted some action on our part, probably a little late, however. Upon closer inspection we found that he was not bloated from decomposition, he was just fat. His skin appeared a waxy black because he happened to be a black guy and his skin had literally been completely colored on with black Sharpie markers. This was not a scenario that fit within our set of assumptions.

Long story short, we learned that these two guys in the apartment, among others, had been drinking and playing Russian Roulette like real stupid idiots. The guy on the couch was the first to pass out drunk so his buddies thought it would be funny to color on his face and arms with black permanent markers. They did a thorough job, I might add.

The other guy on the floor — well, he had played Russian Roulette and lost. Upon waking, the guy on the couch had no idea he had been a human coloring book or that the other kid had shot himself in the face while he slept. And the others had been found later. They all ran after the gunshot, leaving their friend for dead because, hey, that’s what friends do.

Assumptions

We all know the saying about what happens when we assume something. Though that may be true, there are actually two ways to assume. One way to assume is by taking something for granted as true without gathering more information to confirm or deny it. Sure, we have to make snap judgements and quick decisions in nanoseconds on this job everyday. But we can and should re-evaluate the given scenario to gather more information after the initial threat or urgency has been mitigated. This won’t happen on its own; we have to be proactive about it.  If we just go with our initial assumptions only, we can make a decision based on a false premise and end up in a world of hurt.

The other way to assume is to take responsibility for something. Taking responsibility for a given circumstance means we take ownership of it — we assume responsibility for it. And when we take ownership, we will be more diligent because the best possible outcome depends on it. That means we don’t take shortcuts, defer, or shirk, or blame. We assume the responsibility. We take it on ourselves to gather all the facts, cover all the angles, and make the best possible decision.  Which, I might add, can be an evolving process.

What Ifs

For example, I assumed body number two sitting on the couch was a dead person. I made that assumption based on a quick glance in a dimly lit room under unusual circumstances. What I should have done when I saw body number two was call it out, cover down it, and after the rest of the apartment had been cleared then checked for vitals with a cover officer. With that new information we would have made different decisions.

What if that had been a bad guy who had just killed the other person, was armed, knew we were outside, and was only playing dead? Unlikely, maybe, but very possible. That would have been a real bad day for us. I took it for granted that my initial assumption was true. I did not make an effort to verify it once the apartment had been cleared and the urgency of the moment was over. That assumption put us all in jeopardy.

Take it from me, if you’re going to assume anything, assume responsibility.

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– What situations have you been in that turned out to be not what you first assumed?
– What steps could you have taken to verify your first impression once the immediate threat was mitigated?
– How could that scenario have played out differently?
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