Friendly Fire

"I don't think anyone will ever know for sure what happened that night," Garber says now. Reached by phone last week, he seemed pained and sobered by the substance of his report. "You've got to understand what these [officers] went through," he insisted. "Picture yourself in a situation where you truly believe your life is in danger. Then you are asked to tell what happened, step by step. That's really tough; you don't know how tough until you've been there. Now everybody wants to analyze what happened and what they did wrong. It's so much easier to judge people when you have never had to face bullets flying at you, genuinely fearing for your life. We should remember that these people didn't have that luxury."

Of course the same could be said for Andre Madison.

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More About

• Andre Madison
• Minneapolis Police Department
• Allen Garber
• Shootings
• Police

Editorial Intern Michael Cowan contributed research to this article.