On September 27, Harris County Sheriff Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal was killed on a routine traffic stop. He pulled the man over for running a stop sign. After talking with the man at his vehicle, Deputy Dhaliwal walked back toward his police car. The driver got out of his vehicle and ambushed Dhaliwal and shot him in the back of his head. Dhaliwal was not able to recover from the injuries and was pronounced dead. This tragic line of duty death has brought several things to mind for me and I wanted to share some of those thoughts with you.
The first thing that I thought about is how impossible it is for officers to not be vulnerable on a traffic stop. I thought about that a lot when I was riding with one of the officers on Friday night. I paid extra attention to the stops that he did and thought about many other traffic stops I have been on. When they initially pull the car over, they are able to be fairly aware of what’s going on around them. They position lights on the vehicle and look at what’s happening around them. When they approach the car each officer has their own routine and way of doing it. Then they usually walk back to their car to check the person and to write the warning or ticket. Then they approach the car again to give the ticket and complete the traffic stop. There are so many times that the officer has their back exposed or has their head down to write. It’s not poor training or carelessness on their part, it’s just reality. If you stop to think about it, eye contact and uninterrupted listening are important pieces to good customer service. The officer has to spend at least a little bit of time at the vehicle focused on talking with the driver and that means they aren’t looking at other things. While the officer is busy doing all they have to do, the person in the car has nothing but time to sit and wait. Sadly, for some of the people that get pulled over, this turns into time to plot something. It would be great if there was always a second officer available to come and keep an eye out on the traffic stop, but that’s not always an option. It might be possible in smaller areas, but most places are too spread out or don’t have enough officers on the street.
Side note...this is why officers take it so seriously when you don’t pull over right away. Yes, they want you to pull over in a safe space, but the longer you drive means more time that they don’t know what’s happening in the car. That could give you time to stash drugs, to position a gun within easy reach, to call someone else to come to the location to harm the officer, etc. I don’t know how we got to a place where these things have to be such constant thoughts for the officers.
I know that anything can happen to any of us at any time, but the threat is different for officers. It makes me sad that by putting on their uniforms and coming to work they instantly have a target on them. When officers do a traffic stop, they are simply doing their job. No one enjoys getting pulled over, but officers should not be dying because of that. The person that shot Deputy Dhaliwal already had a warrant and was going back to jail at some point no matter what. Killing the Deputy did nothing to change his situation. The logic behind it all doesn’t make any sense to me and this isn’t an isolated incident. A lot of the shootings on traffic stops are done by someone who is going to be headed to jail and it seems that they will stop at nothing to stay out as long as possible.
As officers have processed and talked about what happened to the Deputy, they brought up a couple of concerns. One thing that was mentioned was the possibility of his turban obstructing his view. It was mentioned that maybe his peripheral vision was blocked because he was wearing it. Someone also mentioned that since it covered his ears that maybe he wasn’t able to hear as clearly. People have asked if he wasn’t wearing the turban if he could have seen or heard the man coming and been better able to react. The turban was important to Dhaliwal’s faith and it’s awful to think that might have contributed to him losing his life. For some of the officers, their faith is what helps keep them grounded and able to do their job. Him not wearing his turban would have taken away a lot of that. It would be so unfair for officers to lose the chance to wear things that are important to them because of the risk posed by other people.
The other thing people mentioned was how nice and compassionate Dhaliwal was, which in many ways is a really good thing. He was definitely loved by the community and I can tell positively impacted a lot of people. For the officers left behind trying to make sense of this death, they asked if he was too nice and too trusting of people. They wondered if that potentially cost him his life. Did he assume that the guy he pulled over wouldn’t do anything to him even though he had the record and the alerts? It’s extremely unfortunate that this even has to be a thought. Being compassionate and caring about people should always get to be a good thing. Situations like Dhaliwal’s prove otherwise though. People obviously cannot always be trusted and sometimes compassion is not strong enough to overcome evil. Between how officers have to be trained to be able to do their job and what they encounter on the streets, their compassion can be lacking at times. Whether it was his faith or something else, it sounds like Deputy Dhaliwal was able to keep his compassion for people strong. I hope that officers will absolutely do what they need to in order to protect themselves, but I don’t want it to cause them to not see opportunities to offer compassion and kindness.
As I watched the livestream of Dhaliwal’s funeral, it was a beautiful expression of love and support for his biological family and his law enforcement family. They held the traditional Sikh funeral first and then transitioned into the law enforcement funeral. I saw something as I watched that I hope to never have to do. I saw the Harris County Sheriff’s Department Chaplain get up and officiate the funeral. I imagine that he met with the family and helped to make the arrangements of what would happen at the service. I imagine he worked to try to hold the department together during such a difficult and extremely emotional time. Even though it’s a large department, I could tell as the Chaplain spoke that he knew Dhaliwal well, so I knew this was a hard loss for him too. I know Pastors officiate funerals for their congregants all of the time and those losses are often extremely hard. There is something so different about the idea of a line of duty death funeral though. The magnitude of the service is so great and the pain is so real because the family ties run so deep. I know when you sign on as a law enforcement chaplain it means that you could have to do one of these services at some point, but I sincerely hope that time never comes. I will give my all and do my best if it does because they deserve it, but I really don’t want it to ever happen.
To Sandeep Dhaliwal’s family and department- he was truly a hero that put his life on the line to protect and serve others. I’m so sorry that he’s no longer here with you, but I hope that his incredible legacy will carry you forward in the days, months, and years ahead. Keep his spirit alive as you go about your daily interactions with people and make sure to watch each other’s backs carefully. Rest easy sir, the officers will take it from here.