It was a police officer`s nightmare.
A bank robbery suspect armed with a shotgun led authorities on a chase, only to end the pursuit by veering into one of the worst possible spots and times for a shootout-the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant near lunchtime. Witnesses said 20 to 30 shots were exchanged, and by the time the suspect surrendered a minute later, he and two police officers had been wounded. A third officer and a bystander were struck during the chase.
The scene in Roselle last week contrasted sharply with another chase eight days earlier, when a bullet from an Illinois State Police trooper`s gun killed a man who had beaten and kidnapped his former girlfriend.
Far from a crowded fast-food restaurant, that chase ended on the shoulder of the Cicero Avenue exit of the Stevenson Expressway.
Although no one has complained that police mishandled the Roselle pursuit, the difference in how the two scenarios played out again has raised a touchy question. Given suburban police officers` less frequent though growing exposure to violent situations, are they sufficiently prepared to respond?
Moreover, the chases and subsequent shootouts underscored two of the biggest areas of debate in the law enforcement community: use of deadly force and police pursuits.
At issue is not whether they should be allowed but under what circumstances.
Statistics confirm that police in Chicago are much more likely than those in the suburbs to be assaulted in the line of duty.
In 1990, the last year statistics are available, there were 218 cases of Chicago officers being attacked with firearms, compared with 9 in the rest of the state, according to Illinois State Police.
If there is a difference in preparedness, though, it does not stem from initial training, officials said. All new recruits, whether from the city, suburbs or Downstate, go through one of six academies that teach the same basics.
”We certify them and approve curriculums and instructors,” said Thomas Jurkanin, director of the Illinois Police Training Board, ”so that no matter which academy in the state a recruit officer attends, they would be exposed to the same” program.
Once on the street, though, experience can vary widely.
”A (suburban) officer is going to be more hesitant to take action because he is not going to believe what`s going to happen to him, whereas a Chicago cop goes out every night prepared for that,” said Naperville Lt. Mark Robbins, a 19-year veteran who said he has never had to fire his weapon in police work.
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Roselle Police Lt. Joe Olliges put it this way: ”You don`t have these situations every day, so it`s hard to train. It`s hard to be prepared for them. . . . I`ve never had to fire my weapon in 26 years.”
But that may be changing, judging from incidents such as Monday`s.
In that case, Itasca Patrolman David Hancock and a bystander were wounded during the chase.
Roselle Chief Richard Eddington and Sgt. Jimmy Lee Jr. were wounded in the shootout at the fast-food restaurant.
C. Brett Swoape of Roselle, a father of two who turns 34 on Sunday, has been charged with bank robbery and attempted murder in connection with those incidents.
It was reminiscent of the day in December when police chased Jill Erickson, wife of bank robbery suspect Jeffrey Erickson, through some of the same streets before she died in a shootout with authorities.
Amid the increasing likelihood of such violence, many suburban and Downstate police departments are expanding their training to include such high-tech tools as computer simulation.
In it, officers face off against a big screen that plays potentially lethal situations, such as a bank alarm or burglary.
The trick is to determine, in a short amount of time, who the bad guys are and whether you should shoot.
It is training beyond the firing range.
”They can practice putting holes into a piece of paper to see if they can mechanically use the gun,” said Jack Phillips, whose Schaumburg company uses the computer-simulation equipment to train as many as 50 agencies.
”However the mechanical use of the gun is about 1 percent of the problem,” Phillips said. ”The other 99 percent of the problem is what is going through that officer`s mind when he is confronted with a situation that forces him to decide whether or not to use deadly force.
”The biggest single thing they discover is time-how truly little time they have to make the decision.”
Beyond the issue of police training and firearm use, though, the recent highly publicized chases drew attention to police pursuits.
Although state law dictates many of the procedures for using deadly force, there is no such uniformity with pursuits.
And some experts who have studied the issue contended that tighter policies governing chases are needed.
”Do we want to have that broad range of policies? Or do we want more restrictive policies that are common to all jurisdictions?” said Michael Charles, director of the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. ”Overall, you provide the maximum degree of safety to the public through restrictive policies.”
Many agreed that pursuits are warranted when the suspect is armed and apparently has committed a serious crime, as was the case last week in Roselle.
Police ”have to weigh the risk of the chase versus letting this person go,” said John Millner, chief of the Elmhurst police and past president of the Du Page Police Chiefs Association.
”In the case (last week) when a man is firing out a window, it would be in the community`s best interest to stop this guy as quickly as possible,” he said.
Itasca Police Chief Michael McDonald said of Monday`s chase: ”With the number of units, the number of officers and the number of jurisdictions, if in fact everyone had backed off and this guy had gone on his merry way, we would be facing this situation today knowing that we had an attempted murderer on the loose and willing to rob banks.”
But Charles said most pursuits begin with offenses much less serious than a bank robbery.
In fact, 52 percent to 63 percent of pursuits are initiated by police for traffic violations, according to a study that Charles and two Illinois State University researchers released this year.
Moreover, of the 300 people killed nationwide in pursuit-related accidents in 1989, about 23 percent were innocent third-party victims in uninvolved vehicles, the study said.
Given such dangers, the study said: ”Perhaps the single most important recommendation is that police agencies should have well-developed, highly restrictive and discouraging police pursuit policies, as well as clear and simple procedures for regulating pursuits.”
Changes to pursuit policy will be considered, along with dozens of other issues, beginning this week as the Long-Range Planning Committee for the state Police Training Board meets.
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Jurkanin, the board`s director, said the wide-ranging sessions will
”pull together experts to see how we can improve and to capitalize on things that are being done in other areas of the United States.”