Chapter 50 – How to Pass a Psychological Evaluation Using the "Justifiable Force Theory
Officers on administrative leave remain on active-duty status. Their mandatory psychological evaluations are handled through the LAPD's Behavioral Science Services division — a unit embedded at headquarters and major divisions, specializing in officer screening, crisis intervention, and fitness-for-duty assessments following use-of-force incidents.
For more complex evaluations — PTSD presentations, behavioral pattern analysis, anything requiring deeper clinical work — the department refers officers to contracted forensic psychology practices that have cleared departmental credentialing. Dr. Jolene's downtown clinic was one of those practices.
Administrative leave got triggered by three categories of incident: Officer-Involved Shootings, Excessive Force complaints, and active internal investigations. The psych screening existed to answer one question: is this officer fit to return to duty?
The evaluation covered three areas.
Trauma Response Assessment — post-incident psychological state, signs of acute stress reaction.
Sean's internal response to this category: Feeling excellent. Another productive day keeping the citizens of Los Angeles safe.
Behavioral Compliance Analysis — evaluating propensity for abuse of authority, proportionality of response.
Sean's internal response: The man was clearly suffering from a severe copper deficiency. He pointed two firearms at a law enforcement officer. The deficiency has been addressed.
Stress Tolerance Evaluation — assessing long-term patrol stability and decision-making under pressure.
Sean's internal response: Completely stable. If California ever needed someone to step in as governor on short notice, he could make that work.
The department covered the cost. Officers paid nothing.
Downtown Los Angeles sat in full morning sunlight, the kind of clear, dry Southern California light that makes the city look like it was designed specifically to be photographed.
Sean drove the downtown arterial at an easy pace, windows cracked, the engine settling into its low cruise note beneath him. Sunlight came in at an angle across the windshield, throwing moving reflections across the dashboard while the air conditioning kept the temperature exactly where he wanted it.
The stretch of Fifth Street he moved through was the particular downtown mix that only Los Angeles produces naturally — the glazed-tile dome of the Central Library sitting in comfortable historical authority next to the obelisk of City Hall, both of them flanked by the glass towers that went up in the eighties and nineties and the newer developments still going up now. A hundred years of the city's self-image stacked on top of each other and somehow coexisting without apparent friction.
On the sidewalk below, a man in a suit moved at the specific pace of someone already late for something. A group of art school students moved in the opposite direction, canvas bags, hair in colors that didn't occur in nature, completely unbothered. A street cart on the corner was already running, the smell of roasted corn and chili spice drifting up through the open window.
Sean found parking twenty minutes after leaving Hancock Park and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
His instincts registered someone watching from across the street. He assessed the situation in approximately one second and arrived at the obvious conclusion.
Of course people look. Have they seen me?
In the category of self-assessment, Sean operated without apparent ceiling.
Upstairs, Dr. Jolene was wrapping up with a client — a woman in her early forties who left the office with the specific composure of someone actively constructing it in real time over something that had recently come apart. Fresh heartbreak, by the look of it. Jolene handled the exit with practiced professional warmth.
He spotted Sean in the waiting area and his expression shifted into the easy brightness of a man who was genuinely glad to see someone.
"Come in, come in." He ushered Sean through. "Had two scheduled this morning, then a walk-in showed up between them."
He waved it off cheerfully, settling behind his desk.
"Four hundred and twenty an hour. Seven dollars a minute. Cash." He spread his hands in the universal gesture of a man who has made peace with his own flexibility. "Who turns that down?"
Cash income of that nature was, technically, reportable to the IRS. Jolene's filing practices in that particular area had developed certain informalities over the years. What the government couldn't trace, it couldn't tax. He slept fine.
After a few minutes of easy conversation, Jolene pulled a manila folder from his desk drawer, the label reading LAPD Internal Behavioral Science Assessment, and shifted into his professional register.
"Officer Sean — for the record, this conversation constitutes a mandatory psychological evaluation during your current administrative leave, commissioned by the department. The resulting report goes directly to the internal review board as part of your fitness-for-duty reinstatement file."
He set the folder open on the desk.
"This is not a therapy session. What you say here does not carry doctor-patient privilege, though I'll conduct the evaluation objectively and professionally throughout. Any questions before we begin?"
"None."
Sean had done enough of these to recognize the shape of the conversation before it started.
Jolene clicked his pen.
"Walk me through your sensory experience during the incident. What did you hear? Was your vision clear? Did you consider alternative courses of action before using force? Do you find yourself replaying the sequence?"
"I heard the suspect rack his weapon. Vision was clear throughout. No viable alternatives were available." Sean kept his delivery even, measured, the practiced cadence of someone who has given this specific account before. "He'd already discharged his firearm — the round struck his own leg due to improper handling. With a partner present and the suspect actively armed, I acted to protect both my partner and any bystanders in the vicinity. I don't replay it."
Jolene recorded the answers verbatim, nodding at the appropriate intervals. Textbook responses. Clean, proportionate, procedurally grounded.
"Any post-incident sleep disturbance? Nightmares, insomnia? Avoidance of the location or related stimuli? Emotional numbing or detachment?"
"None."
Jolene wrote: Subject demonstrates no acute stress symptoms.
"How do you evaluate the outcome of your actions? Any guilt, second-guessing, or moral conflict? Would you make the same decisions under identical circumstances?"
"I performed appropriately given the situation. No guilt, no second-guessing. Under identical circumstances I'd make the same call. Every decision was deliberate."
Sean's internal commentary, running parallel to his spoken answers, was considerably more direct.
The man had been trafficking contraband. He had discharged a firearm at a law enforcement officer — admittedly into his own leg, but the intent had been present. The outcome had removed an active threat to public safety and eliminated one node in a distribution network that had been putting product on the streets of Southern California for years.
Guilt was not a factor. Sean slept perfectly well. He considered this a reasonable response to having done something useful.
After the evaluation ran its course, Jolene reviewed his notes, made a few final additions, and summarized his clinical findings at the bottom of the form.
Officer's current psychological state stable and within normal parameters. Actions demonstrate alignment with departmental use-of-force training and protocol.
He slid the form across the desk.
Sean read through it, picked up the pen, and signed at the bottom.
Sean Horace.
Jolene scanned the completed document and uploaded it directly to the department's internal review email. He exhaled with the specific satisfaction of a man who has completed a required process efficiently.
"Done. You're cleared."
He paused, then produced a bottle from beneath his desk with the energy of a magician reaching the good part of the trick.
"Before we go to lunch —"
Sean looked at the label.
Château Margaux. Bordeaux. The year printed on it made him recalculate Jolene's generosity upward by several thousand dollars.
A bottle like that — a good vintage, properly stored — ran somewhere between three and five thousand dollars retail. Jolene had pulled it out from under his desk to open at lunch with a colleague on a Thursday in downtown Los Angeles like it was a bottle of house red.
Jolene, Sean thought, treats me like family.
"My classmate sent it as a wedding gift," Jolene said, already moving toward the door. "I've been waiting for the right occasion. This is it."
"Deal," Sean said. "You bring the wine, I'll handle the food."
They took the elevator down together, Jolene moving with the slightly elevated energy of a man who has been told by his wife that alcohol is off the table and has just received a legitimate exception.
Sean noticed the specific quality of Jolene's good mood and asked, in the tone of someone who already has a working theory:
"Flora gave you a pass today?"
Jolene laughed — the full, genuine laugh of a man who has been living under a reasonable but firm household policy regarding his drinking and has just been granted a reprieve for good behavior.
"She made an exception. For you."
Sean considered this as they pushed through the lobby doors into the Los Angeles afternoon.
Marriage, he reflected, was an institution that gave a man many things. A household. A partnership. Children, in some cases. Stability. Shared history.
And, apparently, a designated supervisor for his wine consumption.
The tradeoffs involved were, as always, a matter of personal calculation.
The Château Margaux was already worth the afternoon.
In Malibu, Charlie Harper was almost certainly on his third drink of the day and still processing whatever Evelyn's unannounced visit had produced that morning. Alan had probably attempted to smooth something over and made it marginally worse. Jake had eaten lunch and was back on the couch.
The universe distributed its Thursday afternoons with its usual complete indifference to fairness.
Sean and Jolene walked toward lunch, a five-thousand-dollar bottle of Bordeaux under Jolene's arm, and the afternoon opened up in front of them clean and uncomplicated.
Some days in Los Angeles were simply good days.
The elevator touched down on the ground floor with a soft chime, doors sliding open onto the midday warmth of downtown Los Angeles. The city's standard afternoon soundtrack rolled in with the heat — car horns layered over distant sirens, a hip-hop track bleeding out of the record shop on the corner loud enough to rattle the window display.
Jolene stepped out carrying the Château Margaux with the careful energy of a man transporting something irreplaceable, still riding the mild euphoria of a workday finished early and a wife who had, against her established policy, authorized a Thursday afternoon bottle of serious wine.
Even the familiar gray-brown haze sitting over the downtown skyline looked softer than usual. Everything looked oddly pleasant. This was the specific emotional state produced by the intersection of completed obligations and exceptional Bordeaux.
The alert detonated in Sean's awareness the instant his feet hit the sidewalk.
Emergency Situation: Armed Robbery in Progress.
Briefing: The moment your vehicle pulled up outside this building, you were marked as a target. As a law enforcement officer, you are not in a position to allow a violent crime to proceed unchallenged.
Note: Standard street mugger. No restrictions on response.
Reward: $5,320.
Enemy weapon status: Firearm — non-functional.
Consequences: None.
The alert dissolved.
A figure broke from behind a fire hydrant across the sidewalk like something that had been coiled there waiting for the right moment.
Young Black male, maybe nineteen. Neon rubber bands holding dreadlocks back from his face. An oversized white t-shirt that had been through enough wash cycles to arrive at a uniform gray, decorated with stains of ambiguous origin. In his right hand, a Beretta M9 — the civilian variant, detachable magazine, fifteen rounds standard capacity, cold metal catching the afternoon sun at the wrong angle.
A used M9 in decent condition ran about six hundred dollars on the civilian market. This one had seen better days.
"Back up — everybody back up!"
The kid thrust the muzzle toward Sean and Jolene, voice cracking between the register of someone trying to sound dangerous and the register of someone who is genuinely terrified of what he's doing.
His eyes swept the sidewalk — sparse foot traffic, nobody paying close attention, parked cars on both sides. His shoulders dropped a fraction. His breathing was loud and ragged.
"Hand it over! All of it! Right now — no games!"
He stepped forward and drove the barrel hard into Sean's chest, the cold steel making the point he apparently felt words alone weren't making.
Jolene's response was immediate and entirely reasonable.
The moment the gun appeared, both hands went straight up — the involuntary, muscle-memory compliance response of a man who has spent enough years working in downtown Los Angeles to have internalized the city's foundational street wisdom: when a weapon appears, you raise your hands first and process the situation second.
His face had gone several shades lighter. Cold sweat appeared at his temples with impressive speed.
"Shawn." Jolene's voice carried the specific controlled tremor of a man deploying professional calm over genuine fear. He spoke quickly, quietly, keeping his eyes on the gunman. "Just give him the money. Do what he says. He — he could pull that trigger."
He cut a frantic sideways look at Sean, the message in it completely clear.
Neither of us is short on cash. My wife and kids are expecting me home for dinner. Please do not make this worse.
The only thought running circuits in Jolene's mind was a variation of the same regret on repeat: Why didn't I increase my life insurance coverage when Flora suggested it last year?
Sean, for his part, appeared to have not registered the metal pressed against his sternum, Jolene's escalating distress, or the general urgency of the situation.
The corner of his mouth moved in a way that could generously be described as a smile.
He reached into his jacket, produced his wallet with the unhurried ease of a man settling a coffee tab, opened it, and extracted a single hundred dollar bill between two fingers.
He held it out toward the gunman.
"Here's twenty dollars," he said, in the same tone you'd use to tell someone the time. "You can keep the performance tips for when you improve."
The kid stared at the hundred.
He's handing me a hundred and asking for change?
His brain attempted to process this and produced only static.
I'm the one robbing him. Why would I give change?
Sean watched the confusion play out on the young man's face and added, with the crisp impatience of a man whose time is being wasted:
"Hey. You spacing out? I said give me my change. Eighty dollars. I'm being generous — a performance like that, twenty is already a stretch."
The contempt in it was surgical. It found every frayed nerve the kid had and pressed down simultaneously.
"You think this is a joke?"
The fury that replaced the confusion was the real thing — humiliation burning hotter than fear, the specific rage of a young man who came here to be taken seriously and is being treated like an inconvenience.
The intellectual understanding that he should probably not escalate a situation involving a man this calm evaporated completely.
He drove the muzzle up until the barrel pressed against Sean's forehead, voice breaking with rage and adrenaline.
"I said give me everything. Right now. Last warning."
The cold steel touched skin.
Sean's expression completed its transition. The faint amusement was gone. What replaced it was something considerably flatter and more serious.
He did not comply.
Instead he reached back into his wallet, slid the hundred dollar bill back into place, and closed the wallet with a clean, deliberate snap.
"Your performance," he said, voice dropping to something that cut rather than carried, "was not worth twenty dollars. The money stays with me."
Jolene felt his heart physically malfunction. Every word Sean spoke felt like a man choosing to tap-dance on the structural supports of a building.
His shirt was soaked. He was absolutely certain the next sound he would hear was a gunshot.
"Shawn." His voice had arrived at pure desperation. "Please."
Sean glanced at Jolene's still-raised hands.
"Put your hands down, Jolene."
Then, returning his full attention to the trembling figure in front of him, he said each word with complete, deliberate clarity:
"His gun is jammed. It won't fire."
Had it not been jammed, the calculation would have resolved differently the moment the kid stepped out from behind the hydrant. Sean carried his department-issue Glock at the back of his belt. The situation would have been brief.
The words landed like a change in atmospheric pressure.
"Don't — don't test me, man!"
The gunman's voice cracked into something close to a wail, his hands shaking badly enough that the Beretta trembled visibly in his grip. The composure he'd assembled for this particular Tuesday afternoon crime had fully disintegrated.
All he'd wanted was enough cash to take the edge off. A quick score, no violence, in and out. He was not a murderer. He had never wanted to be a murderer.
"Then shoot," Sean said.
He said it the way you'd say go ahead when offering someone the last piece of pizza.
He leaned forward slightly, pressing his own forehead more firmly against the barrel.
"Go on. Shoot."
Jolene watched the dynamic invert in real time and felt genuinely disoriented — he could no longer confidently identify which of the two men in front of him was the one conducting the robbery.
"I — please, just —"
The plea didn't finish.
CRACK.
Sean's right hand moved once. The open-palm slap connected with the kid's cheek with enough force to snap his head sideways, dreadlocks whipping, the impact ringing off the building facades and bouncing back off the parked cars on both sides of the street.
The Beretta hit the sidewalk and skittered under a parked SUV.
Sean shook his hand once at the wrist, the gesture of a man disposing of something unpleasant, and looked down at the kid — now standing with one hand pressed to a cheek that was going to carry a full handprint for the next several hours, eyes watering, the specific expression of someone who has just had a very bad plan arrive at its logical conclusion.
"If you're not going to fire it," Sean said, voice carrying the specific coldness of genuine contempt, "don't point it at people."
The street went quiet around them.
Jolene stood with both arms still half-raised, apparently having forgotten about them, staring at the handprint visible on the young man's cheek from where he stood.
The mugger's ragged, wet breathing was the only sound.
Sean straightened his jacket.
"You good?" he asked Jolene.
Jolene slowly lowered his arms.
"I need a drink," Jolene said.
"That's what the Margaux is for," Sean said. "Let's go."
The kid sat down on the sidewalk, hand still pressed to his face, and watched the two men walk away toward the restaurant like nothing had interrupted their afternoon.
In Malibu, Charlie Harper had just finished his fourth drink and was feeling considerably better about the Evelyn situation than he had at ten that morning. Alan had retreated to the guest room to call his therapist. Jake was watching television.
The universe continued its Thursday with complete indifference to the extraordinary range of experiences it was simultaneously delivering to different people across the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.
The elevator touched down on the ground floor with a soft chime, doors sliding open onto the midday warmth of downtown Los Angeles.
Maybe it was the relief of a finished workday, or the particular euphoria of Flora authorizing a Thursday afternoon bottle of serious wine, but even the standard gray-brown haze sitting over the downtown skyline looked softer than usual to Jolene — everything oddly pleasant, the city doing its best impression of a place that had its act together.
The street's soundtrack rolled in with the heat. Car horns layered over distant sirens, a hip-hop track bleeding out of the record shop on the corner loud enough to rattle the window display. The quintessential Los Angeles afternoon.
The alert detonated in Sean's awareness the instant his feet hit the sidewalk.
Emergency Situation: Armed Robbery in Progress.
Briefing: The moment your vehicle pulled up outside this building, you were marked as a target. As a law enforcement officer, you are not in a position to allow a violent crime to proceed unchallenged.
Note: Standard street mugger. No restrictions on response.
Reward: $5,320.
Enemy weapon status: Firearm — non-functional.
Consequences: None.
The alert dissolved.
A figure broke from behind a fire hydrant across the sidewalk like something that had been coiled there waiting for the right moment.
Young Black male, maybe nineteen. Neon rubber bands holding dreadlocks back from his face. An oversized white t-shirt that had been through enough wash cycles to arrive at a uniform gray, decorated with stains of ambiguous origin. In his right hand, a Beretta M9 — the civilian variant, detachable magazine, fifteen rounds standard capacity, cold metal catching the afternoon sun at the wrong angle. A used M9 in decent condition ran about six hundred dollars on the civilian market. This one had seen better days.
"Back up — everybody back up!"
The kid thrust the muzzle toward Sean and Jolene, voice cracking between the register of someone trying to sound dangerous and the register of someone who is genuinely terrified of what he's doing. His eyes swept the sidewalk — sparse foot traffic, nobody paying close attention, parked cars on both sides. His shoulders dropped a fraction. His breathing was loud and ragged.
"Hand it over! All of it! Right now — no games!"
He stepped forward and drove the barrel hard into Sean's chest, the cold steel making the point he apparently felt words alone weren't making.
Jolene's response was immediate and entirely reasonable.
The moment the gun appeared, both hands went straight up — the involuntary, muscle-memory compliance response of a man who has spent enough years working in downtown Los Angeles to have internalized the city's foundational street wisdom: when a weapon appears, you raise your hands first and process the situation second. His face had gone several shades lighter. Cold sweat appeared at his temples with impressive speed.
"Shawn." Jolene's voice carried the specific controlled tremor of a man deploying professional calm over genuine fear. He spoke quickly, quietly, keeping his eyes on the gunman. "Just give him the money. Do what he says. He — he could pull that trigger."
He cut a frantic sideways look at Sean, the message in it completely clear.
Neither of us is short on cash. My wife and kids are expecting me home for dinner. Please do not make this worse.
The only thought running circuits in Jolene's mind was a variation of the same regret on repeat: Why didn't I increase my life insurance coverage when Flora suggested it last year?
Sean, for his part, appeared to have not registered the metal pressed against his sternum, Jolene's escalating distress, or the general urgency of the situation.
The corner of his mouth moved in a way that could generously be described as a smile.
He reached into his jacket, produced his wallet with the unhurried ease of a man settling a coffee tab, opened it, and extracted a single hundred dollar bill between two fingers. He held it out toward the gunman.
"Here's twenty dollars," he said, in the same tone you'd use to tell someone the time. "You can keep the performance tips for when you improve."
The kid stared at the hundred.
He's handing me a hundred and asking for change?
His brain attempted to process this and produced only static.
I'm the one robbing him. Why would I give change?
Sean watched the confusion play out on the young man's face and added, with the crisp impatience of a man whose time is being wasted:
"Hey. You spacing out? I said give me my change. Eighty dollars. I'm being generous — a performance like that, twenty is already a stretch."
The contempt in it was surgical. It found every frayed nerve the kid had and pressed down simultaneously.
"You think this is a joke?"
The fury that replaced the confusion was the real thing — humiliation burning hotter than fear, the specific rage of a young man who came here to be taken seriously and is being treated like an inconvenience. The intellectual understanding that he should probably not escalate a situation involving a man this calm evaporated completely.
He drove the muzzle up until the barrel pressed against Sean's forehead, voice breaking with rage and adrenaline.
"I said give me everything. Right now. Last warning."
The cold steel touched skin.
Sean's expression completed its transition. The faint amusement was gone. What replaced it was something considerably flatter and more serious.
He did not comply.
Instead he reached back into his wallet, slid the hundred dollar bill back into place, and closed the wallet with a clean, deliberate snap.
"Your performance," he said, voice dropping to something that cut rather than carried, "was not worth twenty dollars. The money stays with me."
Jolene felt his heart physically malfunction. Every word Sean spoke felt like a man choosing to tap-dance on the structural supports of a building. His shirt was soaked. He was absolutely certain the next sound he would hear was a gunshot.
"Shawn." His voice had arrived at pure desperation. "Please."
Sean glanced at Jolene's still-raised hands.
"Put your hands down, Jolene."
Then, returning his full attention to the trembling figure in front of him, he said each word with complete, deliberate clarity:
"His gun is jammed. It won't fire."
Had it not been jammed, the calculation would have resolved differently the moment the kid stepped out from behind the hydrant. Sean carried his department-issue Glock at the back of his belt. The situation would have been brief.
The words landed like a change in atmospheric pressure.
"Don't — don't test me, man!"
The gunman's voice cracked into something close to a wail, his hands shaking badly enough that the Beretta trembled visibly in his grip. The composure he'd assembled for this particular Thursday afternoon crime had fully disintegrated.
All he'd wanted was enough cash to take the edge off. A quick score, no violence, in and out. He was not a murderer. He had never wanted to be a murderer.
"Then shoot," Sean said.
He said it the way you'd say go ahead when offering someone the last slice of pizza at a Malibu beach house.
He leaned forward slightly, pressing his own forehead more firmly against the barrel.
"Go on. Shoot."
Jolene watched the dynamic invert in real time and felt genuinely disoriented — he could no longer confidently identify which of the two men in front of him was the one conducting the robbery.
"I — please, just —"
The plea didn't finish.
CRACK.
Sean's right hand moved once. The open-palm slap connected with the kid's cheek with enough force to snap his head sideways, dreadlocks whipping, the impact ringing off the building facades and bouncing back off the parked cars on both sides of the street.
The Beretta hit the sidewalk and skittered under a parked SUV.
Sean shook his hand once at the wrist, the gesture of a man disposing of something unpleasant, and looked down at the kid — now standing with one hand pressed to a cheek that was going to carry a full handprint for the next several hours, eyes watering, the specific expression of someone who has just had a very bad plan arrive at its logical conclusion.
"If you're not going to fire it," Sean said, voice carrying the specific coldness of genuine contempt, "don't point it at people."
The street went quiet around them.
Jolene stood with both arms still half-raised, apparently having forgotten about them, staring at the handprint visible on the young man's cheek from where he stood.
The mugger's ragged, wet breathing was the only sound.
Sean straightened his jacket.
"You good?" he asked Jolene.
Jolene slowly lowered his arms.
"I need a drink," Jolene said.
"That's what the Margaux is for," Sean said. "Let's go."
The kid sat down on the sidewalk, hand still pressed to his face, and watched the two men walk away toward the restaurant like nothing had interrupted their afternoon.
In Malibu, Charlie Harper had just finished his fourth drink and was feeling considerably better about the Evelyn situation than he had at ten that morning. Alan had retreated to the guest room to call his therapist. Jake was on the couch watching television and had not moved in two hours.
The universe continued distributing its Thursday afternoons with complete indifference to the extraordinary range of experiences it was simultaneously delivering to different people across the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Only Sean could operate like this.
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