MILWAUKEE — Pleasant Prairie police say officers missed a concealed gun on a man who was arrested Thursday afternoon. The agency shared Friday that the man shot and killed himself in the back seat of a squad car near the Kenosha County Jail.
Let’s go in-depth on the standard operating procedure used by law enforcement agencies across the country when searching suspects for guns.
“Get rescue right now, right now!” an officer told 911 dispatchers.
Right outside the Kenosha County Jail, Pleasant Prairie officers urgently called for help after a man who was moments away from being booked and placed behind bars shot and killed himself in a squad car.
"We've got a male with a gun shot wound to the head,” an officer said.
Pleasant Prairie police say the man was arrested for weapons offenses and the officers didn’t find a gun that was apparently still on him during their search.
“Somebody did not do a thorough search of their prisoner,” said retired police captain Andra Williams.
Williams performed thousands of arrest searches during his decades of service with the Milwaukee Police Department.
“One of the things we used to emphasize with officers is make sure you search your prisoners, you have to search them,” he said.
He says law enforcement agencies follow the same standard operating procedure called the ‘search incident to arrest’ to make sure weapons, sharp objects and drugs are obtained before the person is placed ion the back of a squad car.
“From head to toe, we’re looking for anything that can cause harm to ourselves or to the prisoner themselves,” he said. “We will take everything out of their pockets, it’s an actual pat down from the groin all the way down to your feet.”
In this case, Pleasant Prairie police have yet to share how the suspect was able to reach a gun or where it was located, but Williams says officers are trained to handcuff people behind their backs to limit their movement.
“This is a tragedy in itself but you said it could have had a worse outcome.” TMJ4 reporter Ben Jordan said.
“Yeah, you have a prisoner in a backseat, access to a loaded gun where he could have easily shot both officers in the front seat of the car,” Williams replied.
Williams says squad cars are designed to have a metal barrier between the front and back seats, but above that is thin plexiglass so the officers can keep an eye on the arrestee. He says the plexiglass wouldn’t stop a bullet.
"It's not any type of ballistic temperament to it at all so yeah, that could have been very tragic,” he said.
“Officers across Wisconsin are probably going to be monitoring this case. What should they take away from this?” Jordan asked.
"Search your prisoners,” Williams said. "When you're looking at where the harm is going to come from, chances are it's going to be your prisoner and if that prisoner doesn't have it in his hands, it's on his person."
The Racine County Sheriff’s Office is the outside agency assigned to investigate this shooting.
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