On August 31, 2025, a story appeared on the website of a local station. Fed from KCTV in Kansas City, it told the tale of an officer-involved shooting in Independence, MO. I’ll summarize the news report here. 

Before I do, realize that something seen in news – whether you read it, it’s read to you with graphics as on a televised newscast, or read on an audio-only service, it’s very likely wrong in a number of ways. While intentionally misleading information is likely rare, it’s usually laziness, not having all the facts and having to fill space or they were led astray by people at a scene. 

Still, it’s worth the effort to try to learn – or at least “war game” the situation as reported.

Regardless, here’s the tale.

At around 1AM on the date of the news story, officers responded to an apartment building in answer to a disturbance call. (Another news service reported the incident as “a disturbance call involving individuals armed with guns.”) Apparently responding officers “found a man alone in the back seat of a car.” We don’t know how it occurred that they saw him, if there was a car involved in the call or what exactly happened.

Apparently, they wondered if he knew anything of the disturbance. While being questioned, he became agitated and drew a gun. He failed to comply with orders to drop the gun and was shot. 

As they were uncertain if he was part of the call for service –  they sought to protect the injured man from the potential for harm from the situation resulting in the disturbance. 

According to the news, “… they (responding officers) carried him about 50 yards away to wait for paramedics to arrive.” Sadly, he succumbed to his injuries.

As is typical with these situations, reporters try to fill in the story. A neighbor was quoted as being unsettled by the events, noting (they say), “I have two kids sleeping on the bed. What if you had shot wrong and my kids were shot?”

At the time of the report, the shooting was being investigated – and they were still trying to figure out the original call for service.

To take lessons from this report, some assumptions can be made. They could be wrong in this case, but that wouldn’t alter the validity of the conclusions.  

1. It may be that the officers didn’t drive right up to the case address, but walked up on it – which could have resulted in seeing the man in the car. Consider your approach to every situation. Officers have been (injured) killed because of a careless approach to situations, like this call for service.

2. Getting subjects removed away from the call location: are they part of the disturbance? Is this call an ambush setup? If he’s not involved, you don’t want other citizens rolled up in a potentially violent encounter. Note- they removed him from the scene by fifty yards after shooting; had he not been part of the disturbance call, he could well have become another casualty of it – rather than causing his own demise by poor judgement.

3. “What if you had shot wrong?” – Every gunman's nightmare, a miss that becomes an unintentional hit. Make damn sure before you launch that round that it’s going where it needs to go and nowhere else.

We don’t know the details of this incident. Like most of them, we never know all the information that could be helpful. 

Use care.

— Rich Grassi