A sudden flash: the John Skaggs incident

American Handgunner, Jan-Feb, 2005 by Massad Ayoob

Decisiveness Saves

The department's handling of the involved officer in the aftermath could have been better. They immediately issued him a handgun to replace the one they took into evidence, and that is good. Many cops left with an empty holster have reported feeling punished and disempowered, and resented the feeling of being left helpless minutes after having had to fire a weapon in self-defense. But he should have been driven back to the PD by a brother officer instead of having to pilot his patrol car back there himself. A person who has just been through a fatal shooting has too much on his mind to be left behind the wheel. The necessary interrogation should take place in an unused squad room or a supervisor's office, not in an interrogation room. The officer who has fired justifiably is going through bad enough an emotional firestorm without the wrenching identity crisis of sitting where the criminal suspect sits, as someone reads him his Miranda rights. In fairness to the department, this shooting went down at a time when the proper model for handling an officer in the aftermath of such an incident--a protocol brilliantly developed by Lt. Chuck Higbie, the founding commander of LAPD's OIS (officer-involved shooting) investigation unit--had become commonplace around the country. I'm sure East Moline PD would have managed it better today.

If the object in the big man's hand had indeed been a knife, as Skaggs had every reason to believe it was, it would have been only the officer's self-taught swiftness and decisiveness that saved his life. Officer Larry Hubbard was in very close proximity to Skaggs and the suspect, and saw the whole thing. He later told John, "I was watching you and I never saw your hand move. Your hand went up and the gun went off and he was falling."

Many officers felt the .38 Special was too light a caliber for police work, but in this case it delivered an instant one-shot stop. Even when loaded to P (added powder, added power, added pressure) the .38 Special is a medium-powered weapon when seen within the broad spectrum of handgun calibers, and is on the light end for police service and self-defense sidearms. The Remington 125-grain bullet, with its serrated copper half jacket and exposed lead hollow tip, proved to be a dynamic man-stopper when fired at plus/minus 1400 feet-per-second velocity from a .357 Magnum. At less than 1,000 feet-per-second in the .38 Special, it sometimes worked dynamically and sometimes didn't. It did in this case, partly because the bullet struck the heart on an upward-traveling angle and partly because the "3 inches to muzzle contact" range determined at autopsy was probably closer to the muzzle contact side. Bits of human tissue were discovered inside the bore of John's Model 10, which along with John having been sprayed with the man's blood is consistent with the backsplash pressure created inside the body by muzzle blast in a contact gunshot wound. The massive damage, half the heart macerated by the shot, also indicates that the muzzle was touching or nearly touching, with the muzzle blast itself being directed into the body and tearing tissue apart.