Editor’s note: This article is part of a series. Click here for the previous article.
Gordon Graham here and thanks for your continued support and the great follow-up on previous articles in this series. I have always thought public safety personnel are smart people and reading some of your comments again proves that to me. Thanks for all you do.
In my last article I referenced RPDM: Recognition-Primed Decision-Making. I learned all about this in reading the work of Dr. Gary Klein. Here is something for you to take a look at—and yes, I know it is Wikipedia but this piece is accurate:
I read Dr. Klein’s great book Sources of Power many, many years ago. In retrospect I wish I would have read it much earlier, because my lack of knowledge regarding this issue almost resulted in a death.
In the 20 years I actively worked the street, the closest I ever came to accidentally killing someone involved a diabetic. I will tell you the rest of the story right now so there is no mystery here.
A person can look very, very, very drunk—and in fact be very, very sick as a result of a diabetic reaction. I guess I heard that at some point in my early years in law enforcement, but in 1979 it was not popping into my head.
It was a Friday and I was assigned to afternoon shift (1345–2230). I was working Beat 5 in Central Los Angeles (the backbone of the CHP if you want to know the truth) and I was on the prowl for a drunk driver. Yes, I had a bias—I wanted bad drivers to be drunk drivers so I could arrest them for this crime that claimed thousands of lives a year and continues to do so today. And I was very good at spotting them and arresting them.
He can barely stand up; he is leaning against his Caddy. He looks like a drunk, he smells like a drunk, he was driving like a drunk and he talks like a drunk. Based on my experience, THIS GUY IS DRUNK!!
So here I am on my Kawasaki KZ1000 looking for my Friday drunk, and there he is—right in front of me southbound approaching Adams. Yellow Cadillac two-door (for my Canadian friends reading this, the “Yank Tank”) weaving to the right of the #3 lane going into the #4, and then rapidly overcorrecting. These are typical drunk behaviors, so rather than wait for another violation (why do cops try to talk themselves out of making a stop?), I light him up. He fails to yield—another typical drunk behavior.
So I hit him with the high beams—and again no yielding, another drunk behavior. Then I use the siren—and again no yield, just that steady drifting to the right and then overcorrecting. This went on for about a mile or so. So I did something we weren’t supposed to do, but all the cool motor cops did it—and I certainly was cool back then.
I accelerated and came up on his left side, matched his speed at 60 mph and pulled out my stick (we had the straight sticks back then) and tapped on his driver-side window a couple of times. Still nothing. When a driver ignores that, it seals the deal: This guy is drunk.
The driver finally exits the Harbor Freeway at Vernon, makes a right turn, hits the curb and comes to a stop. As I make my right-side approach (for the life of me I cannot understand why police academies still teach it is OK to walk up on the left side where you have no cover, no concealment and are exposed to passing traffic), he opens the door and almost falls out of the car. This guy is drunk!
He can barely stand up; he is leaning against his Caddy. He looks like a drunk, he smells like a drunk, he was driving like a drunk and he talks like a drunk. Based on my experience, THIS GUY IS DRUNK!!
So I call a car unit to drive this guy over to the jail. When we arrive at the jail, I am just about the only reason this guy does not fall down as we walk up the ramp to the room where they have the breath testing machines—the old Gas Chromatograph Intoximeter Mark II.
In the 20 years I actively worked the street, the closest I ever came to accidentally killing someone involved a diabetic.
I am figuring this guy is in the .40 range—he is a solid drunk. After several attempts to get his lips around the tube, he gives me a good sample. The machine clicks and clicks and clicks (like it did all the time) and it comes back with a digital reading of ZERO ZERO.
What would you know, a broken machine! So I pull him over to a second GCI (thinking, LAPD should do a better job of keeping these machines working) and I get a second sample on this machine. What do you know—another ZERO ZERO. What are the odds we would have two broken machines on the same day?
So I take him to the last machine available—I am now very upset that LAPD does not maintain their equipment better—and you guessed it, the third breath test is … ZERO ZERO!
That’s OK, I think. I will still get my conviction on this guy in court. I know the jail doctor very well—we talk all the time when I am booking people (Dr. Dwight Mogee was his name and he drove a Mercedes Pullman to work; what a fascinating fellow he was). I will have him pronounce this guy “under the influence” and I will attach the doctor’s report to my arrest report and I will get my filing and I will get my conviction.
So I drag this arrestee around to the jail infirmary and there is Dr. Mogee. “Hey Doc,” I say, “Take a look at this idiot.” His instant response: “Excellent observation, Gordon—severe diabetic coma.” He immediately starts working on this guy along with the nurse, and while he is doing so, he says, “I am damn proud of you, Gordon—a lot of cops would have missed this and thought he was drunk!”
To say I was flabbergasted would be an understatement. I was also very, very embarrassed. I later learned Dr. Mogee knew that I thought this guy was drunk. He was trying to cover for me in front of the other cops present. Dr. Mogee also explained that in another 15 or 20 minutes, this fellow would have been dead. That is a lesson that I will always remember: You can look very, very, very drunk—and in fact be very, very sick with diabetes.
As I thought about this post-incident, I realized my “bias” was so severe that I missed the obvious. I had made up my mind and that was that.
Anyhow, I am way over my word limit, so I will stop this piece now, but the reason I shared this story is because it illustrates the danger of RPDM “getting in the way” of making a good decision. I’ll have more on this in our next writing. Thanks for your patience.
TIMELY TAKEAWAY—Check out “The Invisible Gorilla” on YouTube. How does the phenomenon it illustrates apply to our decision-making process?
