Eye On Safety: Moore Police Chief addresses officer training after stunning body cam footage

The Moore Police Department released body camera footage and 911 calls from an officer-involved shooting on Tuesday evening. Officers responded to a stabbing in progress around 8:30 p.m. on Monday, where a caller reported that a 19-year-old had stabbed his mother.

Officers gave over 20 commands to drop the weapon, but the man advanced toward the officers, prompting them to open fire. Officers performed life-saving measures, but the man later died at the hospital.

Related: Moore PD releases body camera footage, 911 calls after officer-involved shooting

The officers are on administrative assignment, and the Cleveland County District Attorney's Office will review the case.

In today's Eye on Safety, Moore Police Chief Todd Gibson joined News 9 to discuss the body camera footage and what it's like for officers in highly stressful situations.

Q: How do officers in your department train for these events?

A: Unfortunately, this is an awful situation. Any law enforcement police officer will tell you that this is not what they get in the career field for, and we do provide a lot of training, but the training that we provide to police officers in the 21st century is just really a broad spectrum, and this being just one component of what we train for.

Q: How do officers assess a threat in high-stakes situations like these?

A: Assessing a threat is a great way to describe it because in the old way of training, it was very standardized and very modular. Today, we teach more of a critical decision-making model where it's just constantly assessing the situation, taking in information, evaluating where we can and how we can respond, and then constantly reassessing. We never want to be static in just saying, like this is the threat, and this is the response. We want to constantly re-evaluate and re-analyze what strategy we can [use] to resolve this situation in the most peaceful way.

Q: What specific training do police officers get for handling individuals armed with weapons like blades?

A: A lot of times in the past, there was this thing called the 21-foot rule, and we've kind of thrown that out. We've kind of said that's not really accurate. What we want to really assess is what is the immediate threat to the officer or to a citizen, somebody in danger like this instance, for example. We know we had two people that were already stabbed. We don't know where they are, we're trying to figure out what's going on, and so we want to take in all those kinds of factors. What is the threat to the community, and what is the immediate threat to the officer? And then, what are barriers? What are distances? Where can the officer retreat? To retreat is actually a strategy that we teach in policing, but police can only retreat to a certain distance, and then we have to protect the community, and we have to protect the officer.

Q: How do you address criticism of the officer's actions in these situations?

A: Understand that we don't like this any more than the critics like this. We wish that we didn't have to talk about this. We wish that these would never happen, but critics are entitled to their opinion, and the situation is awful. It's awful for everybody involved, and so we understand that there will be critics, and we will listen to that. We want to be open to that. We're always looking to evaluate and kind of make changes as we move forward. How can we do better? How can we improve how we provide service to our community? Ultimately, we are there to protect the vulnerable from harm and to protect our community, and that's what we're going to do. Sometimes, we know that we'll be criticized for it, and that's OK.