Strickland death hasn't changed team's operations

There have been no revisions in operating policy or training by the New Hanover County Sheriff's Office Emergency Response Team in the months following the Dec. 1 shooting death of Peyton Strickland.

Nor is there likely to be, Maj. Arch Jones said last week.

Jones, one of the supervising officers of the SWAT-like unit, said the ERT remains as busy as ever as its members serve warrants and make arrests in the community.

"We didn't see anything in training that could have changed or prevented this. It was a mistake, and I don't see how you could prevent a mistake," Jones said.

ERT supervisors reviewed a sheriff's office internal affairs report on the incident. A separate report by the State Bureau of Investigation that was furnished to District Attorney Ben David was not made available to the sheriff's office, Jones said.

"We're doing the same training we have been doing and our policies are the same," he said.

Strickland, 18, was shot twice by former ERT member Christopher Long as team members attempted to serve search and arrest warrants at a Long Leaf Acres home rented by the Cape Fear Community College student and two other men. Strickland and two others not in the home were sought in connection with the Nov. 17 robbery of a pair of Sony PlayStation 3 game systems from a University of North Carolina Wilmington student who was also assaulted as he unloaded the just-purchased consoles from his car.

The ERT unit was requested by UNCW police, who were investigating the PlayStation robbery. They had seen an image on the Internet of another of the suspects, Ryan Mills, and two other men posing with a shotgun, an assault rifle and handguns, and considered him likely to be armed. Strickland was not in that picture.

A medical examiner's report showed the fatal head wound suffered by Strickland came from a bullet fired through the front door. Long told investigators he mistook the crashing noise of a battering ram used by an ERT member in front of him for gunshots coming from inside the house.

'A judgment call'

"We didn't feel there was a deficiency in the training," Jones said. "It was a judgment call, and they had the training to make the call if he thought his life was in danger."

David said during a court proceeding in December that none of the other ERT members at the scene had the same perception of gunshots coming from inside the house. "If he thought the guy was trying to shoot him, I don't know what type of training would have prevented that," Jones said.

'A training issue'

Training is a key element in the success of any paramilitary police unit, said David Klinger, an associate professor in the criminology department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Klinger is the co-author of a study that examined the practices of several hundred SWAT teams over a 12-year period.

Klinger found that in most years, less than 10 percent of the SWAT teams even fired their weapons.

Klinger does not claim to have extensive knowledge about the Strickland case, but he is acquainted with the basic facts leading up to the shooting.

"I don't understand how that happens," he said, "because (Long) should have been in numerous situations where the battering ram struck the door, and he mistakes the sound of a ram for a gunshot? It could be a training issue."

Before signing off on current training practices, "you would have to do a thorough review of policies and procedures and so forth," Klinger said.

"All I can tell you is the more training, the better. You really can't train enough for these potentially high-risk situations," he said.

Chief Deputy Tom Parker would not comment last week about training or resources available to the ERT and declined in December to discuss what factored into the decision to use the battering ram on the door. Parker said in a December interview that ERT members had five training scenarios during the previous six months in which tactics employing battering rams and ballistic shields were practiced.

Parker said that as time allows, new ERT members are sent to basic training and then advanced training. He said the team schedules practices from noon to 4 p.m. every other Monday. Jones said the six full-time members of the unit train 16 hours each month. Jones could not be reached Thursday or Friday for clarification.

Long, 34, was fired by Sheriff Sid Causey one week after the Strickland shooting. A mistake by a jury foreman who checked the wrong box on a form led prosecutors and the sheriff's office to announce that Long was indicted on a charge of second-degree murder. He was not indicted for any crime, and the error was not corrected until the next day.

David turned the Long case over to the N.C. Attorney General's Office Special Prosecutions Section last week. "Our attorneys (will) review the SBI investigation to determine whether the case should be presented to a grand jury," Attorney General Roy Cooper said Feb. 12 in a prepared statement.

The position occupied by Long, a corporal and experienced full-time ERT member, has since been taken by another deputy, Jones said.

'A good family man'

Long's former ERT colleagues are following the case closely.

"He was a good worker and a good family man," Jones said. "We're sorry it happened and sorry he did what he did. If he was wrong, it was not like he stole money and tried to disgrace the job."

Jones was asked if any lessons had been learned from the events on the night of Dec. 1.

"Certainly, if we knew it was going to turn out like that, we wouldn't have done it," he said. "The same information we had going over there is the same information we have right now. Nothing has been disputed. I don't think anything has changed."

Ken Little: 343-2389

ken.little@starnewsonline.com