TOLEDO, Ohio — Toledo police have shot two people in separate incidents since Tuesday, shining a light on the high-pressure situations officers can encounter while responding to emergency situations.
"It can be unpredictable and just cyclical; you just never know what we're gonna get into," said Mark King, manager of the police basic training program at Owens Community College.
Following up on Tuesday's shooting in south Toledo and Wednesday's shooting in central Toledo, the conversation surrounding how officers prepare for and handle stressful situations such as lethal force has resurfaced.
In Tuesday's case, the suspect, 22-year-old Kaden McCrory, was shot at twice by an officer and hit at least once after law enforcement executed a search warrant for a robbery parole violation. In TPD's statement, "as task force officers attempted to arrest the suspect, he (McCrory) pointed what appeared to be a handgun at officers. A Toledo Police officer, who is assigned to the task force, shot the suspect."
The same statement later said that the suspected gun McCrory had was actually a BB gun.
King said for those who have been involved in training police cadets for years, the argument is hard to make that officers can easily make that distinction in the heat of the moment.
"I would challenge anybody to differentiate between a real firearm and a fake firearm, on the street, when the situation is very dynamic, heavily stressed and quickly changing; to say you can tell me that's a BB gun or that's a real lethal force gun," he said.
In Wednesday's case, TPD said that officers responded to a call on Vance Street. Upon their arrival, "officers made contact with the suspect’s elderly grandmother who had a stab wound to her face."
The grandmother told officers that three of her great-grandchildren were inside the home with the suspect.
An officer at the scene was eventually forced to shoot the suspect twice to rescue the children, Toledo police said in a press release. The extent of the suspect's injuries are unknown at this time.
Both cases involved officers having to make decisions that involved potentially lethal force, which King says can be very difficult to make in the moment. King said he and Owens Community College try their best to prepare cadets for all possibilities.
"I frequently bring this up to my cadets," said King. "I ask them two questions. One: are you able to take someone's life if you have to? Two: are you willing to give your life for someone if you have to? It's not easy to kill someone, even if you're being presented with a lethal threat. We value life in policing."