Deadly Force in American Policing

Since the days of the wild west we have delegated the use of deadly force to our police officers. Only under certain specific and narrow circumstances are civilians allowed to legally take the life of another. Police officers alone, are given the right to use deadly force when a criminal presents an immediate danger to innocent victims, whether the potential victim is the officer himself or a citizen to be protected.

(Klinger 2005). At the same time as we delegate the use of force to police officers we expect those officers to use that force judiciously.In the guidelines for every police department there is language that states that each and every citizen’s life has value. Society does not take lightly police officers’ use of excessive or unnecessary force. If in an instant heat of the moment, an officer makes the fatal decision to intentionally use deadly force, to shoot to kill, he must later justify his action.

A killing by an officer, lacking jury or judge, will later be minutely scrutinized from all angles. An internal affairs investigation begins immediately after a fatal shooting.If there is public outcry that the use of deadly force was not justified, the officer will be demonized as “trigger happy”. If the public and the media support the officer’s action, he will be pronounced a hero. (DOJ 2002) Surprisingly the technical legal definition of what constitutes deadly force varies from one police department to another.

In some jurisdictions there must be officer intent for it to be deadly force. The officer must have aimed his weapon, fired, and killed; or intentionally run over someone with his vehicle and killed; for the killing to be considered deadly force.Other jurisdictions include in their definition of deadly force, force which results in death, whether the death was intentional or not. The use of chokeholds for example, have been banned in many jurisdictions because of the number of deaths they cause. Likewise, the use of pepper spray while an individual is in restraints has caused a number of deaths, and also has been banned by many departments. The list goes on.

People have died after being shot by police tasers. The taser, seen as a non-lethal weapon can in fact be lethal if used on an individual that may have various drugs in his system.An officer has no way of knowing what the individual may have ingested, yet the non-lethal means of restraint becomes instantly lethal. Deadly force is at the extreme on the spectrum of the force continuum. The presence of an officer or an officer’s verbal command are at the opposite extreme, with several steps in between.

There are certain situations where it seems that officer use of deadly force is clear cut and easily justified. Returning fire from an armed criminal suspect, is one such instance. However, even then the decision to use deadly force, to shoot to kill, may not be an easy one.An officer must immediately consider the proximity of other people before returning fire. It may be that in the best interest of the safety of innocent people, the officer must retreat until he can successfully secure the area. Even if there are no citizens visible, the officer still has to consider the ricochet.

The “fleeing felon” rule was once commonly used to justify police use of deadly force. This common law rule has been challenged in recent times, and may not prove to be a justification for lethal force in all instances.First, an officer may not have all the facts about the crime, even if it is perceived to be a felony that just took place. For example, consider the following scenario. Suppose an officer responds to a 911 call that a home invasion is taking place. The officer arrives at the scene to find a woman that is crying hysterically.

The woman says that the invader is still in the house and has a gun. As the officer calls for backup and begins to assist the woman out of the house, a man runs out the back door and heads for the back fence.The woman cries out, that’s him, that’s him. The officer goes to the back door and shoots the man dead before he escapes. Were the officer’s actions justified? The officer could in fact have justifiably killed the man that invaded the woman’s house.

On the other hand, maybe that isn’t what took place at all. Maybe the man is her boyfriend and he lives there. Maybe they have been arguing and she wants him to leave and he refuses. Maybe she exaggerated in her 911 call. Maybe a lot of things. I realize this imagined scenario is overly simplistic.

I use it to illustrate that things are not always what they seem and that along with officer’s authority to use deadly force comes a great deal of responsibility. Another type of example where deadly force was used was in a small town in Florida. A woman in her sixties was despondent and had called a suicide hot line threatening suicide. She was deeply depressed and drinking heavily. Officers responded and came to the edge of her property which was very deep and had a long driveway.

She warned them away. She told the officers that she did not want to speak to anyone, and she told them to leave.Officers did not leave, instead they began to walk up the driveway. She again told them to leave and that she had a gun. She told them that she would shoot if they came any further on her land.

The officers continued to advance on foot on the driveway trying to reason with her, and also apparently did not believe that she had a gun and would shoot them. The woman then came onto her front porch with a shotgun and shot over the officer’s heads. One of the officers then shot her dead. A similar scenario took place in another part of Florida.A mentally ill man refused to come out of his house.

The man had an open warrant for a failure to appear in court for a nonviolent misdemeanor charge. The man’s house had suffered severe hurricane damage and had been condemned. Relatives and neighbors contacted the police, concerned that the man would not leave his house, and concerned for his safety in the building which was in severe disrepair. The neighbors and relatives had been unable to convince the man to come out of his house and the man would also not allow anyone to come in.Once the police arrived the man became increasingly paranoid and barricaded himself further, nailing all of the windows and doors shut. It was unknown whether the man had any weapons inside the house.

After a stand off that lasted a number of days, the police used heavy equipment to knock down the man’s condemned house. The man’s body was found in the debris. (Stock et al 1999). These scenarios are extreme examples of incidents where the intentional use of deadly force was morally if not legally unjustifiable. However, there are many other incidents where the misuse of deadly force was due to mistake.

According to a paper published by the Police Policies Study Council: “in 1999 in Troy Hills, New Jersey, Stanton Crew, was shot and killed by four police officers from several jurisdictions. Police had boxed in his car with their vehicles and he allegedly tried to escape by maneuvering around them. His driver’s license was suspended for lapsed insurance, and as he drove home, a cop tried to pull him over for “driving erratically. ”Reportedly afraid that he would not be able to afford the fines for driving an uninsured car, Mr.

 Crew allegedly sped up, going 70-80 mph for ten miles. He then crossed the median and drove five miles in the other direction before being boxed in. Police claim they feared that Mr. Crew was going to run them over. Cops fired 27 shots at his car, killing Mr.

Crew and wounding his passenger. Though reports stated that police feared Crew’s vehicle presented a threat to their safety, after-action analysis suggested that the police units that boxed-in Crew’s vehicle found themselves in a crossfire of their own making, with police rounds striking other police vehicles.This likely added to the confusion present as to the degree of threat that Stanton Crew presented. ” (Aveni 2006). The author, in his analysis of this incident states that because of the high speed chase and the suspect’s behavior, there was confusion as to the necessity to use deadly force. When Crew attempted to escape on foot, officers likely perceived him as a threat.

The responding officers had surrounded Crew’s vehicle once stopped and opened fire from all directions. There was probably confusion as to the origin of the gunfire, since the police officers were caught in crossfire of their own making.The combination of low light and mistake of fact caused these officers to open fire and kill Mr. Crew. (Aveni 2006).

There is a wide variation in the rate at which police officers use deadly force across jurisdictions. In a five part investigative report staff writers at the Washington Post found that Washington DC police officers led the nation in the number of incidents of police use of deadly force. Reporters found that over the previous five years, DC officers had shot and killed a total of 57 people.This number of police killings is more than that of Chicago, which has five times the population than Washington DC. During the same time period Washington DC officers were involved in a total of 640 shooting incidents, which is forty more police shooting incidents than occurred in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles had six times the population of Washington DC at the time of the report. Between 1990 and 1998, Washington DC officers shot and killed 85 people. Between 1993 and 1998 Washington DC officers shot at 54 vehicles as the vehicles drove at them or at others, terming them “vehicular attacks”.Of the 54 shootings, nine people have been killed, all of them unarmed.

Police guidelines dictate that officers are supposed to get out of the way, rather than shoot at moving cars. The danger of ricocheting bullets along with the danger of a vehicle becoming a deadly missile once a driver is injured or dead, far outweigh any possible benefit in shooting at the vehicle. During the same time period in New York City, which has 14 times the population as Washington DC, officers shot at only 11 cars.During the same time period in addition to the incidents where police officers shot at vehicles, Washington DC officers shot nine unarmed male pedestrians. Two of them were killed. Five of the seven surviving men were charged with assault on a police officer, and charges were dropped in all cases except for one.

In 11 cases between 1992 and 1997, Washington DC internal investigations declared that that shootings were justified despite contradictory evidence. Eyewitness accounts and/or forensic evidence was in direct opposition to the findings of the internal investigators’ ruling.The internal investigations were also found to include errors, inconsistencies and omissions. In 1996, nearly 75% of Washington DC officers who used their weapons in that year failed to meet the District’s basic firearms standards for using their weapon.

Washington DC officers use a Glock semiautomatic handgun which requires a great deal of training and skill. In fact, between 1986 and 1996 there were more than 120 accidental discharges. Of those 120 accidental discharges, 19 officers have shot themselves or accidentally shot another officer.In the Washington DC Police Department’s internal records show 29 fatal police shootings were counted between 1994 and 1997. Washington Post staffers found that an additional seven records were missing from police records.

And also found that another seven deaths were mislabeled as nonfatal. Therefore Washington DC departmental records undercounted police killings by almost one third. Police shootings are costly to the police departments; and so costly to taxpayers. During the 1990’s there were more than 70 lawsuits filed against the Washington DC Police Department for use of deadly force.In June of 1998 a Washington DC Superior Court awarded over six million dollars to a man who was shot in the back 12 times by SWAT team members. The man was armed only with a knife.

Also in June of 1998, the Washington DC police department settled quietly with a man who had accidentally been shot by a police officer. The settlement amount was $797,500. and the shooting officer was the man’s roommate. The officer had not been to the police firing range in 26 months to qualify with his firearm. (Leen et al, 1198).

The conclusions drawn from these statistics are valuable.Training and supervision are of paramount importance for the safety of officers and citizens alike. The city of New York’s police department, although often maligned in the media, is a model for departments across the country. The restraint used by New York police officers can best be understood when compared to less populous jurisdictions. In 2006, there were 37,000 uniformed police officers in New York, making New York’s the largest police force in the country. By December of 2006, New York police officers had killed a total of 11 people that year in use of deadly force incidents.

In Philadelphia, during the same time period at least 19 people were killed by police and in Las Vegas 12 people were shot and killed. In a suburb of Atlanta, DeKalb County, with a population of only 700,000, police killed 12 people during the same time period. DeKalb county’s population is one tenth of the population of New York City. There are countries, such as England, where the regular police do not carry guns at all. Only certain tactical units and anti-terrorist teams have firearms. Police use of deadly force at least with a firearm is therefore impossible.

Regular police are issued pepper spray and an extending baton. Police officers are well trained in self defense and physical restraint techniques. However, very few British citizens, including criminals have guns either, so the need for a gun there is much less. Knives are the weapon of choice for many English criminals, and the reach of an extended baton is much farther than a knife.

Since American criminals and citizens often have guns, guns being readily available in many states, unarmed officers in the United States is hardly an option in preventing the use of deadly police force.In the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles, one of the California Highway Patrol Officers that had been pursuing Rodney King and first arrived at the scene, had her firearm drawn. In the officer’s trial part of the defense of one of the officers that was charged with excessive force for the beating of Rodney King, was that the Highway Patrol officer had drawn her weapon, and other officers were trying to quickly restrain King so that she would not shoot. Though this may sound like just an interesting and creative defense for the beating officer’s wrongdoing, there may be some validity in it as well.As I write this paper there is a situation unfolding in Greece involving a police officer’s use of deadly force. According to media reports a police officer shot and killed a teenager.

Other youths began rioting decrying the unlawful and unfair action of the officer. The rioting youths have taken refuge within the confines of a local university which is off limits to police officers. (Becatoros 2008). The New York Police Department’s patrol guide clearly states the departmental position on the use of deadly force.

None of the guidelines are unusually restrictive or surprising.Yet, as shown in the statistics cited earlier in this paper, even though New York has the largest police force in the country and is the most densely populated city in the country it lags behind in police officer’s use of deadly force. It is reasonable to believe that most of the police departments elsewhere around the country have similar guidelines and directives in place. However, I believe one main reason that New York police officers have far fewer incidents of police use of deadly force than elsewhere is the demand for strict compliance to their departmental policies.Another important reason why one department has fewer incidents of the use of deadly force over another department is the training level of the officers. As shown in the statistics discovered by the Washington Post staffers, many Washington DC officers failed to keep up with ongoing firearm training and qualifying.

The Washington DC officers failed to train, yet they remained on the police force. And as the statistics show, their errors caused repeated unnecessary death.