News10NBC In-Depth: Officers who disarmed man with gun trained to ‘always focus on the hands’

Disarming Suspects

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ROCHESTER, N.Y. – News10NBC is taking you inside the police body-worn camera video with the man who trained the officers who stopped a man with a loaded gun. It happened just after the bars closed in the city’s east end Sunday.

The officers who were called to help with a disturbance outside a bar on Lawrence Street in the East End knew there was a problem but they had no idea there was a gun until the man pulled it from his pocket.
That’s when their training took over.

“The average person probably sees a whole group of people gather and maybe they see a gun, maybe they don’t,” said Officer Ryan Parker. “The things the officers see is we always focus on the hands.”

Parker is a 15-year veteran of RPD and assigned to the Professional Development Section. He trained the two officers who walked to the problem outside the East End bar.

One second after a man dressed in white pulls a gun from his pocket, the first officer goes for his wrist and pushes him against a wall.

Berkeley Brean: “So we see the officer immediately go and grab the gun. Is that what you’re trained to do?”

Ryan Parker: “Yes, we teach a tactic that we break down through an acronym ICAT.”

ICAT stands for intercept, control, angle and transition.

“So we intercept that weapon. We control that weapon and that person’s arm to stop that person from firing off rounds,” Parker said.

The man with the gun is Johnathan Dobbs. He is in the Monroe County Jail charged with criminal possession of a gun. He’s being held on a fugitive warrant out of Florida. Bail on the gun charge is $10,000.

Berkeley Brean: “I think one of the things that this video and a lot of body-worn camera illustrates is that how quickly things escalate.”

Ryan Parker: “I think the body-worn camera, and I hope it does, shows the community and anybody watching that things can happen faster than anyone can think. And I really do think our training and our focus on training help those officers make that decision as quick as they could, and like I said, they did an outstanding job.”