While they are usually meant to be reassuring to the involved officers, they are often spoken in ignorance of the situation and too often don t reflect the attitudes of the officers actually involved. Officers who have survived a fatal shooting incident may experience unexpected feelings and respond to their uninvolved peers, families and loved ones in ways that might surprise and shock them all. They may feel isolated, misunderstood and angry at the insensitivity of other cops. The only thing predictable about the aftermath of a police shooting is unpredictability. Shooting another human being to death, self-defense, justified or not, is a profound experience.
Most officers say they are never the same following such a shooting.
On the agency I work with, there is a group of officers who have experienced a fatal shooting who have met to discuss and work through any feelings that arise. This group has discovered that, independent of one another, each experienced the same feelings and attitudes in roughly the same time frames. What follows are some of those experiences. These are real-world thoughts and feelings as encountered by cops like you. The first feelings are often shock and denial.