A warning to listeners: this episode contains graphic violence, including
sounds of gunfire. This is the second episode of the podcast. If you haven’t
listened to the prologue and episode 1, hit pause and start back at the
prologue.
Ambi of police car driving in video.
A police car is driving down the road in a small town in Wisconsin on a
rainy day in 2011. The lens of the dash camera is speckled with drops
of water. It's hard to see much of anything.
But then, you can hear the police car rev into gear. Now, it's speeding after
a red pickup truck, and the siren is wailing.
The pickup truck rounds a corner and turns onto a quiet residential street.
Then it slows to a stop.
But then, the car door opens.
Gunshots.
The driver gets out and shoots at the police car. The officers fire back. A
barrage of bullets sprays the truck as the man hobbles back into
the vehicle and tries to drive away. His truck slams into an electric pole.
Officer:
"Shots fired."
20 seconds, and more than 50 rounds of ammunition later, the gunfire
stops.
A SWAT team finds the man dead in his truck. One of the officers was shot
in the left foot and lost the tip of his toe.
The dash camera footage now serves as a warning for recruits at the Metro
Nashville Police Department. It shows them just how quickly a traffic stop
can put both citizens and police in grave danger.

 Recruits watched eight of these gunfire-filled videos during an officer
survival course in 2016. That class included Andrew Delke, who graduated
from the academy that December.
Bring in theme music here
Less than two years later, Officer Delke shot Daniel Hambrick while he ran
away. And Delke has said repeatedly that he was following his training
when he pulled the trigger.
"Something we learned in training."
"My training experience."
"That's something we're trained to observe."
That's what Delke's attorneys say too.
"Officer Delke's actions were entirely consistent with his training."
And his supporters at the police union.
"Officer Delke did exactly what he was trained to do."
As the country confronts the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and
others killed by law enforcement, police departments are rethinking their
use of force training.
But in this case, those changes won’t make a difference.
Soon, Delke will stand trial. He's the first officer in Nashville’s history to be
charged with murder for an on-duty shooting.
Delke's case raises questions about the mixed messages the department
sends its officers during training — both in the academy and on the streets.
And whether that training is really why Delke decided to shoot.
I'm Samantha Max, with Nashville Public Radio. This is Deadly Force. It's a
WPLN News investigation.
Last episode, we told you about Daniel Hambrick, the black man who was
killed, and Andrew Delke, the white officer who shot him. In this episode,

 we're going to try to understand why Officer Delke used his gun that night.
And to do that, we're going to delve into the police training and culture that
teaches officers when to use deadly force.
Episode two: Action Beats Reaction
New music.
Delke:
"I said — if I don't — to myself, you know, if I don't shoot him right
now, I'm gonna die. So, that's what I did."
That's Officer Andrew Delke. The audio comes from an interview with the
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation two days after he killed Daniel
Hambrick.
It's just after lunch time on a Saturday, and Delke's sitting in an
interrogation room with two special agents and an attorney. Here's agent
Steven Kennard.
Kennard:
"OK, what I'm gonna have you do is, uh, I'm gonna have you walk me
through the events of the 26th. And then we'll have some follow-up
questions afterwards. And I'll, I'll try to let you get, you know, through
it and, and tell me what happened and then, again, we'll have some
follow-up stuff. Um, prior to doing that, uh, have you reviewed or seen
any video or audio recordings that are related to this incident?"
Delke:
"No."
Kennard:
"OK. Now, have you discussed this incident with any other officers,
witnesses, anybody else present at this incident?"
Delke:
"No."
Kennard:
"Uh, other than your attorney?"

 Delke:
"No."
Then Delke launches into his account of what happened. For nearly 40
minutes, the interviewer hardly chimes in, except with the occasional
"OK" and "uh-huh."
So, what you're about to hear is just one side of this story, told two days
after the fact.
But the interview helps us see through Delke's eyes those final moments
before he fired his gun.
Delke:
"All I was doing was following my training, which is, you shoot until
the threat is neutralized."
Pause, then change in tone of music.
We wanted to get a better sense of how officers are taught to respond in
high-stakes situations. Like the one Delke found himself in as he chased
Hambrick through the John Henry Hale public housing apartments.
So, we combed through the Metro Nashville Police Department's training
curriculum — both from Delke's class and from the most recent session at
the academy — to get a sense of the different course offerings. Then we
asked for lesson plans, PowerPoint slides and assessment materials for all
the courses we thought seemed most relevant to Delke's case.
Traffic stops. Foot pursuits. Defensive Tactics. De-escalation.
In those classes, recruits are taught to have a "survival mindset." They
learn about the "10 deadly errors" officers can make — like failing to watch
a suspect's hands or relaxing too soon. And certain "danger signs" to look
out for.
They hear stories about officers getting killed in the line of duty and watch
videos of police getting shot. They're told that "Survival is a state of mind."

 That they should "NEVER GIVE UP" and "Treat all suspects as if they
are armed."
That "Action beats reaction."
These are direct quotes from the training materials. And Delke says those
lessons were running through his mind that day when he pulled up behind
Daniel Hambrick in the parking lot.
Delke:
"As I pull in, I see that apparently three occupants of the vehicle had
already gotten out. One of 'em was actually already at the door of an
apartment that was right there…Initially, my attention was drawn to
the person going into the door. And then I see to the left of him
another male black subject that immediately looked at me and did
what we call 'rabbit eyes.'"
Delke says he sees Hambrick's eyes darting back and forth, trying to pick a
direction to run. He watches Hambrick reach toward his waistband.
New recruits are taught to assume that's where criminals typically carry
illegal guns. That it's just like in the movies. Armed suspects. Trying to be
"cool." Hiding weapons in their waistbands.
Dispatch:
"58-15. Male black. Long dreads. Blue button up shirt. 54."
At this point, Delke tells the interviewer, he's concentrating on one thing.
Delke:
"I see the gun come out of his waistband. So I start saying, you know,
he's 54. Our 10 code for person with a weapon. It's 54 with a
handgun.”
Dispatch:
“54 and black handgun.”
Delke:

 “As he's pulling it out, immediately, all my attention goes to the
gun. It's immediately identified as immediate threat. And I'm just
focused in on that.
It's unclear if or when Delke actually sees a gun in Hambrick's hand. It's not
visible in the first few clips of surveillance footage.
But this intense focus on a weapon — one that may or may not even be
there — is what Delke's officer survival instructor calls "tunnel vision." It's a
type of sensory distortion. When an officer's eyes zoom in on just one
aspect of the situation.
And Delke says he keeps seeing that gun.
Delke:
"And as he starts to turn, to the best of my recollection, he's turning
towards his left side and looks at me again and the gun is pointing in
my direction at the time that he makes a turn to face me. And it's
another thing, you know, that — a reference from my training is I took
it to be what we call a targeting glance, where he's looking to see
where his opponent is, where I was, the officer, so that that way, he
knows where to aim if he's going to take a shot at me."
The surveillance video never shows Hambrick pointing a gun at Delke.
It's possible this happened in the approximately two seconds of the chase
not caught on camera. But it's also possible Delke's account is now veering
from the truth.
Delke says he's watching Hambrick's body language. And that "targeting
glance" he mentions is another sign he's been warned about.
So Delke draws his own gun. Then he says he yells at Hambrick to drop his
weapon and stop running. That if Hambrick doesn't drop the gun, he'll
shoot.
By now, Delke says, he's 100% convinced that Hambrick intends to use his
gun against him. Plus, the officer says he's worried someone else could get
hurt. They're running through an apartment complex. And there's a park
across the street.

 Delke says it's all happening so quickly. Barely 30 seconds have passed
since he started chasing.
Delke:
"As I'm seeing him run with the gun and refusing commands, I'm
thinking, I've got to prepare myself to use deadly force here if I need
to. You know, I'm thinking about more about my training, you know, it
just kind of clicks with you, in these situations where, you know,
action time vs. like, reaction time is something we learned a lot
about."
Action time versus reaction time. This is a concept that comes up over and
over in the department's training.
In a defensive tactics course, recruits learn that it takes time for officers'
bodies and brains to catch up with an unexpected threat. That by the time
they're faced with danger, they're already behind the curve. And that the
best defense is to act, before it's too late.
Delke:
"It's something I was actually shown by a training officer on the
firearms range."
Delke takes the investigator into a moment from the academy that's stuck
with him. He and the other recruits were casually standing around at the
academy's gun range, during one of their nearly 100 hours of firearms
practice. No one was paying much attention to their surroundings.
Delke:
"And then, all of a sudden, the instructor draws his gun from his
holster, behind his back, without looking, fires and puts a shot on
target. So, I've seen it with my own eyes."
This idea that an officer's life could be in danger at any moment has been
drilled into Delke's head. And not just from his formal training. His
supervisors have reinforced this message, too.
Delke:
"I'd also been in a similar situation where I chased somebody that
turned out to be armed."

 Now, Delke brings up another incident from his record.
If you've listened to the prologue, you've heard about a night when Officer
Delke chased a suspect he thought might be armed. It was about nine
months before he shot Daniel Hambrick. But in that case, Delke didn't pull
his gun. He only drew his Taser.
Delke:
"I was, you know, trying to use the minimum amount of force
necessary and, you know, I actually received a, you know, um, I was
talked to by a supervisor after that, you know, wondering, you know,
'Why didn't you pull out your pistol? I mean, if you believed him to be
armed, I mean, you need to have that pistol out because, you know,
he just reiterated the training I already had that you gotta remember
how quickly somebody could pull that gun out, point it at you and fire.
… So, all that to say, you know, the importance that I'm thinking of
action vs. reaction…So I take action — decide to action to beat his
action and fired the shots to neutralize what I perceived as an
imminent threat that I was gonna be — I said — if I don't — to myself,
you know, if I don't shoot him right now, I'm gonna die. So, that's what
I did. To the best of my recollection. Three or four shots. I mean, I
wasn't counting by any means. All I was doing was following my
training, which is, you shoot until the threat is neutralized."
Dispatch:
"58-13. Shots fired. Suspect down."
Music out. Reverb.
So much of the language Delke references in his interview comes straight
from the training materials. Immediate threat. Targeting glances. Action
beats reaction.
Whether intentionally or not, Delke’s explanations for each decision he
made all seem to come straight from the slide shows and training videos
But Delke doesn’t mention all the times he broke protocol. Like when he
ran with his pistol in his hand. And when he chased after a man he thought
was armed, instead of seeking cover.

 In fact, Delke's narrative paints a pretty narrow picture of the nearly 900
hours of training he received at the academy. The year he went through the
academy, recruits only spent about a third of their training hours learning
about self-defense and firearms use.
In the other 600-plus hours, they also learned about ethics. De-escalation.
Constitutional law.
But when Delke pulled the trigger, one message drowned out all the others.
Action beats reaction.
Pause.
Wilson:
"'Your number one job is to make sure you go home alive tonight.'"
That's what Tom Wilson says he used to tell recruits about five times a
day back in the late 90s. At the time, he was a sergeant at a training
academy in suburban Maryland.
Now Wilson works for the Police Executive Research Forum — also known
as PERF. It's a think tank that helps law enforcement agencies across the
country update their policies and training to reflect best practices. And it's
one of the leading voices in the movement to reform police use of force.
Wilson:
"We have taken this approach that says, 'We have to train for worst
case scenario.' In other words, you train like everyone's out to kill
you. But that's not reality…Most officers are gonna go throughout
their career and never have to deploy that firearm in a lethal force
situation.”
Wilson says his thinking changed during a conference in the United
Kingdom. It was about a year after Michael Brown was shot by police in
Ferguson, Missouri.
Wilson:
"And we had what would be the equivalent of a high-ranking, like, a
captain or major in Police Scotland who looked at us and said, 'Why

 do you guys say that? Why do you say your number one job's to go
home alive tonight?' And, you know, we would respond, 'Well, it can
be a dangerous job. And, you know, we want to make sure the officer
goes home safely, and they've got a family, and so forth.' And she said
to us, she said, 'Isn't our job to make sure everyone goes home alive?
And we scratched our head and we said, 'Holy cow. Did we have to fly
across the pond for somebody to smack some sense into us?' And
so, we came back, and we talked about this as we designed
Reengineering Use of Force. And every chief in there said,
'Absolutely. Our number one job is to make sure everyone's safe.'"
Since then, has been working with departments to change how they teach
officers to respond to perceived threats. They want officers to think about
all their options first. Then act.
And Nashville's been a part of this culture shift. Metro Police Chief Steve
Anderson actually sits on PERF's board of directors. A member of the force
was at that training in the U.K. And the department has adopted many of
the organization's recommendations over the years.
Carroll:
"One of the things that we work hard on and we're very diligent about
is that training officers to be ready for every situation."
Nashville Police Lt. Grant Carroll worked with PERF to revamp the
department's use of force training. Those changes were just starting to take
shape when Delke went through the academy.
Carroll is a 23-year veteran with the department and has overseen the
academy's firearms and defensive tactics training since 2015.
He says deciding whether or not to use deadly force is a balancing act.
Ethics. Values. The sanctity of human life. That's all important.
But officers are also constantly assessing the threat level. They're thinking
about state law. Federal law. Department policy. Public perception.
Carroll:

 "Then after we go through these different steps, we want to identify
different options, determine the best course of action. And then we
then we act."
Carroll says that Nashville police officers are taught to use all the skills at
their disposal to defuse a situation. But they're also told to expect the worst.
To assume they could be killed at any moment.
Carroll:
“We can do everything right. But if that individual, for whatever
reasons, is determined to hurt us or other people in order, maybe they
just don’t like the police or they want to hurt us or someone else for
other means. We still need to be ready to respond.”
A few months after Officer Delke shot Daniel Hambrick, Carroll met a
couple of our reporters at the police academy for a few hours of use of
force training.
<<<Pop of simulator gunshots>>>
In a small white trailer on the edge of the police department's sprawling
training campus, recruits spend 16 hours in front of a projector screen.
This is where they act out role-play scenarios in the academy's realitybased training course.
Carroll:
"We really want to focus on the judgement and decision making. And
using a simulator in reality-based training so our officers can learn.
And when they hit the streets, they're more likely to make the right
decisions out there."
Trainees are given a black and blue 3-D printed gun. It looks and feels like
a police grade Glock .22, but shoots laser beams instead of bullets.
The instructor sits behind a computer, clicking through potential scenarios.
He chooses ahead of time whether the situation will escalate or deescalate.
Then it's up to the officer to react to whatever's playing out on screen and
decide whether or not to shoot.

 In the first scenario, he says, the officer will be working security at a church,
walking around on foot.
Simulator ambi in.
An image appears on the screen. A man and a woman are standing in the
hallway of a church, arguing.
Man:
"I saw you. Just say it."
Woman:
"No! It didn't happen!"
Man:
"Just say it!"
Woman:
"No!"
Man:
"Don't push me!"
Other man:
"Get your hands off her!"
Chas:
"Excuse me, sir. Step back…Sir. Drop your weapon!"
Man:
"Mind your own business!"
Chas:
"Drop you weapon, sir!"
Gunshots.
Carroll:
"Alright, that means he shot you."
Chas:
"Yeah."
The officer — in this instance, our reporter — doesn't act in time. Within 30
seconds, he's been shot.
Carroll:
"It's common for many individuals not to shoot initially…And the
reason why I think many of us don't is because of sanctity of human
life. We don't want to take someone else's life. We want to try to de-

 escalate it. We don't want to be in that position. So it's common.
However, in a situation like this, whooh, man, it's tough."
It always comes back to this. The urgency to act. The fear of what could
happen if you don't.
Even in a department that's forward-thinking in its policies. That's working
with progressive think tank researchers to improve its training. Officers are
still taught that they should always be on guard. That they should always
be ready to shoot.
That action beats reaction.
New music. Piano melody.
Marsh:
"I hope I can help somebody out there. That's what I thought about
every day."
That's Danita Marsh. She joined the Metro Nashville Police Department in
2003, at a time when she says departments across the country had started
to focus less on officers' brawn and more on their brains.
As a black woman, Marsh doesn't fit the old-school image of a police
officer. And she didn’t set out to make nightly arrests, like Andrew
Delke. The two took drastically different approaches to law enforcement.
But both officers’ lives forever changed during just a short amount of time
on the force.
Growing up, Marsh never planned to go into law enforcement. That's
because, as a kid, Marsh didn't trust the police.
Marsh:
"And I come from a community that said that you don't call the police.
Like, you don't call the police for anything…They were going to do
more harm than good."
Marsh grew up in Jackson, TN in the 1980s and 90s — around the time
when lawmakers passed the federal crime bill. When tough-on-crime

 officials warned of "super-predators" prowling the streets. And Marsh could
feel that tension coursing through her small, racially divided community, as
a young black girl.
Marsh:
"I felt that at a young age like I felt that at at the age of ten, eleven,
twelve. So by time I hit my pre-teen years, I knew that something was
wrong in this country when it came to race. And I wanted to be
instrumental in in correcting this thing that was wrong."
When Marsh's friend joined the Memphis Police Department, she
suggested Marsh give law enforcement a try, too.
Marsh:
"She said, 'I'm telling you, this is where you need to be. This is where
going to make the diff — make a change and make a difference…And
so, you know, so I was like, OK, I applied. And it was like, you know,
just everything happened, you know? And I get onto the police
department, and I go to the academy. And it was challenging. But I felt
like I was meant to be there."
At first, Marsh says, she struggled to adjust to what she calls the training
academy's "quasi military" environment. But in between fitness drills and
law classes, Marsh bonded with her fellow officers in a way she didn't
expect.
And Marsh thinks Metro Police does a better job of training its recruits than
most departments. She says it seeks out accreditations. That it even goes
above and beyond the baseline standards.
In the academy, Marsh says, she learned to keep both
herself and community members safe.
Marsh:
"I wasn't taught to put my life above those in the community. Right.
You understood that you wanted to go home every night, the same
way you left...But it was also about choosing a course of action that
would protect you as well as the people that you're handling, you're
dealing with."

 But sometimes, it was hard for Marsh to act at all.
Marsh:
"I felt like there was restraints on how I could help people and what I
could say and what I could do. Right. And I felt those restraints came
from some from the police department. Truly. But a lot of it came from
the community. Right. Because if I said something — if something I
said was taken out of context, I'm gonna get complained on, because
it's always like the expectation as a police officer that you are
not gonna be fair…And I was almost, kind, of trained, when I got on
the streets, I was kind of trained where you said less as
possible, 'cause it couldn’t be used against you."
So the officer who'd been taught her whole life not to trust the police. Who'd
become an officer to challenge that stereotype. To build that trust. She was
facing the same skepticism.
And she ultimately left the department. But not for the reason you might
think.
There's something else you should know about Danita Marsh. Barely three
years after joining the Metro Nashville Police Department, she was shot.
Marsh:
"It was a domestic violence call."
Marsh remembers it was early morning – just before the end of her
overnight shift. She was sitting in the car with a woman who'd called to
report a domestic assault earlier in the night.
Marsh was about to take the woman to another officer, who would help
her press charges in court. She was jotting down notes. Darting her eyes to
the rearview mirror every few moments. On guard.
Marsh:
"So a police officer, you're always on alert. You're never off-duty.
Right. Even when you're not at work, you're still alert. You're still
scanning and watching."

 Then, Marsh saw a flash. The man from the domestic dispute had come
back.
Marsh:
"So he snuck up on the car. He had two weapons. And he just, you
know, started firing into the car. And I can remember very vividly
trying to key up my microphone to ask for assistance. And I knew my
— I couldn't get my hands to work. And I remember like not being able
to get my hands to hit the hit my radio, the emergency button on my
radio. I just, I couldn't hit it.
And then everything went black. And I just remember floating, you
know, in this darkness, and I remember just there's like this peace.
And it was a different type of peace from being asleep. And I knew I
was floating and I was just kind of floating away. And I remember in
my mind thinking that if I if I keep floating away, I'm not coming back.
right. So in my mind, I started counting because I thought if I could if I
would count, I could stay alert.
But at this point I'm probably not even alert at this point. But in my
mind, I'm thinking if I count and I can keep track of my numbers, I can
stay conscious, I can stay alert, and I won't flow float away."
Marsh was unconscious for three days. Multiple bullets had shattered
her left arm and struck her spine, in an area not protected by her
bulletproof vest. When she woke up, Marsh learned she'd been paralyzed
from the waist down.
It was a side effect of policing she never anticipated.
Marsh:
"It never occurred to me that maybe I may go back home, not the way
I left. Just never occurred to me. Maybe that was just me being naive.
And maybe it was just because we — the spotlight is on the officer
who is killed in the line of duty. So I'm gonna, you know, I'm going to
either go back home the way I left or I'm gonna die in the line of duty.
But you don't. I didn't think about that every day. I rarely thought
about that. I thought, 'Oh, I'm gonna get out there and do the best I
could do and make the best decisions I can make.'"
Marsh knows, better than most, just how dangerous the job can be.

 Those videos recruits watch in the training academy — they're real for
Marsh. In fact, she's in one of them. It's an interview about the night she
was shot.
But in real life, policing isn't as simple as action beats reaction.
Marsh was on high alert. Looking out for all the warning signs. And
she still got shot.
Marsh doesn't want to minimize officers' fears. She says policing is murky.
And that all officers see potentially life-threatening situations through a
different lens. Growing up in a racially divided community that didn’t trust
police certainly tinted hers.
But Marsh thinks the decision to use deadly force is about more than what
officers learn at the training academy. If departments don’t want officers to
pull the trigger, she says, they also need to have more honest
conversations about the other underlying factors at play.
Marsh:
“I just think there’s other things not considered about the use of force
and excessive force and how we are going up that ladder...We look at
the situation. We look at the defendant. ‘What’s his history? Was he a
convicted felon? He’s been arrested how many times? Was he, you
know — this was a bad guy.’ You know, we look at all of this. Then, but
I think, you know, I think we’re now starting to look at that officer. I
look at the officers that are involved in this use of force. And we start
to say, ‘Well, what’s his history? How many complaints has he had?
What kind of training did he receive?’...OK, let’s go even deeper. Who
is this officer as a person? What implicit biases that he may be
bringing along with him.”
Because Marsh says those biases are impossible to escape. She describes
racism in America as a disease. That everyone is infected. And as long
as the illness continues to spread through police departments — even if it’s
just subconsciously — Marsh thinks some officers will keep shooting, no
matter what they’re taught.
Marsh:

 "Law enforcement is inherently dangerous — it's dangerous work.
Right. What — what I think we are experiencing is a denial that this
country has been in about how race plays into policing. And we like to
think that the scales of justice, lady justice is blind. But any time you
have man administrating justice, it's not blind."
On episode three of Deadly Force, we're going to take you all the way back
to Nashville’s Civil Rights movement. We’ll trace through decades of past
killings by Nashville police officers and see how responses from both the
department and the community have shifted over time. And we’ll tell you
about the impact of those killings on Nashville’s black residents.
Credits:
WPLN News Investigates: Deadly Force is a production of Nashville Public
Radio. Editing for this episode came from Chas Sisk, Emily Siner and Anita
Bugg, with additional editing from Tony Gonzalez, Meribah Knight and
Dwight Lewis. Fact checking by Daniel Potter. The episode was written,
produced and sound designed by me, Samantha Max. Chas Sisk also
contributed reporting.
And a big thank you to the entire team at WPLN News, who helped to
make this podcast happen.
Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. The dash camera audio you heard at
the beginning of this episode is a YouTube clip featured in the Metro
Nashville Police Department's Officer Survival course. Andrew Delke's
interview audio comes from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
You can find more materials from this episode online at
podcasts.wpln.org.