His gunnery sergeant had it right

To: Chief William J. Bratton

Los Angeles Police Department

Dear Chief:

When I was a U.S. Marine undergoing combat training a long time ago, a gunnery sergeant named Clutch, I think it was, gave us some advice about the use of firearms.

He said, “You don’t shoot your mother, you don’t shoot your dog and you don’t shoot your friends.”

He phrased it in more colorful terms, but policy and human decency forbid their usage in this journal. I’m pretty sure that Clutch was his name, because it often occurred to me during training at Camp Pendleton that we were in his clutches, and if we didn’t pay attention, his hands would be clutching our throat.

Clutch wasn’t a large man, but he was built of iron and leather, and one paid attention to him when he was in the mood to offer advice, which was often.

Essentially, what he was saying, as we were to learn later during the Korean War, was that you don’t shoot unless you have to, and when you do, you make sure you know who or what you’re shooting at.

Unlike the more recent comments by Marine Lt. Gen. James Mattis, Clutch never suggested that shooting anyone ought to be fun, just necessary.

To the best of my knowledge, no one in my outfit ever shot a fellow Marine, although whether they went home and shot their mother or their dog simply to defy Clutch is unknown to me.

Shooting is on my mind today, Chief, due to the tragic incident involving that young boy your officer gunned down because, basically, he didn’t know what was going on or how to deal with it.

Devin Brown, just 13, with barely a toehold on life, died because he probably didn’t exactly know what he was doing either. His actions were based on a lack of maturity. The response of Officer Steve Garcia was based on the lack of good training.

I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. I’m not among those who believe that all cops are either racist or just plain brutal, although those conditions have existed, and probably still do to some extent, in your department.

What I do believe is that a culture of fear and an inability to respond properly to it can result in the shoot-first syndrome that The Times mentioned the other day in an editorial. What you kill, in effect, can’t harm you.

The problem here is that too often the victims of that kind of mentality are either a kid out joyriding or a homeless woman waving a screwdriver. Or your mother, your dog or your best friend.

Devin Brown, in some ways, was the victim of a few seconds. Had Garcia made sure of what he was dealing with before he began acting like Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral, the kid would still be alive. You don’t kill because a car backs into your car. You get out of the way and do what Gunny Clutch said to do. You know what you’re shooting at.

Tough training is aimed at overcoming fear. I know, after half a century covering cops, that there’s good reason to be wary on the street.

There was equally good reason to be afraid in the mountains of Korea.

Clutch knew fear because he’d fought in the bloody island wars against the Japanese. He was aware of the gut-twisting terror that can almost paralyze a man when he’s in the position of being killed.

I know it too. And your officers know it, Chief.

The kind of training we received in the Corps was oriented toward coping with that fear in the split seconds necessary to overcome and respond to the danger we were facing. It worked for me and for all the rest of us in Fox Company, even in the blackest of night and under the most dire of circumstances.

I’m glad that you’re once more reviewing the policy that currently allows your officers to shoot into moving cars, even if they’re moving just a few feet. But policy is only as good as the manner in which it is applied. Talk tough, Chief. Be a gunnery sergeant. Fear is an all-consuming emotion and without an ability to deal with it through training, more kids like Devin are going to die.

I think your troops also ought to be indoctrinated with the fact that not everyone in South L.A. or on the Eastside is out to make his mark by killing a cop. Some are, and your guys already know that. But most aren’t, and they’ve got to be willing to accept that too and, in so doing, maybe overcome at least part of the fear that compels them to shoot first and bag the body later.

Gunny Clutch said it best when he said goodbye at a beer-drinking party before we were shipped off to war. “We’re all in this thing together. Take care of each other.”

Yours for less violence ...

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez @latimes.com.