A retired police officer has shared the emotional struggle of killing someone while on duty in a video called, “A letter to the man I killed.”
In the video, the officer, who remains unnamed, speaks in a calm voice to the armed man he killed while on duty. The video was posted by the Officer Involved Project, a group that compiles testimonies from law enforcement officers who were “involved in a use of deadly force encounter.”
“This is not a confession,” he says in the video. “It is just fact. I have nothing to hide about it. I am not ashamed of the fact. I have no regrets about doing it. I was doing my job.”
The former officer leaves out many details, instead focusing on the emotional struggle. He discusses his frustration with his department after the death and the emotional baggage from the killing.
“I took your life,” he says. “I get that, but still you took something from me and you changed me forever.”
The Officer Involved Project says it “gives the raw, emotional testimony of over two dozen law officers from around the United States – men and women, husbands and wives, daughters and sons – who chose a life, trained for this life, and dutifully performed their pledge to protect and to serve, and while doing so, became involved in a use of deadly force encounter.”
The retired officer says people don’t understand the emotional trauma of killing someone while on duty.
“Perhaps people would begin to understand the gravity of it were they to see a police officer chocking on the barrel of their own gun trying to turn ‘it’ off or writing about it with the muzzle of a gun pressed against their temple,” he says.
He signs off by saying, “With sincerity, the police officer that killed you.”
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