A tale of two communities.
One a mid-sized Massachusetts city, the other a small suburb of 14,000.
An officer from the city is laid off and finds work in the suburb. Responding to a call in the suburb one evening, the officer finds himself in the living room of a nice home talking to an older couple about an attempted home invasion. Their dog is barking at him. The officer isn’t in danger, just annoyed. Nonetheless, he takes out his gun, points it at the dog, and tells the couple, “Shut that fucking dog up, or I’m going to shoot it!”
The officer does not last long in the suburb.
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This anecdote, I think, illustrates a problem with American law enforcement: different communities, different standards. Suburbanites tend to know their rights. They are not afraid of the police. They do not fear retaliation if they make a complaint. They know the people in the local government. They know lawyers. They know how to sue. The suburb does not tolerate police who pull their weapons and threaten house pets. They tolerate such behavior. A suburban kid gets busted with intent to distribute, his parents hire a lawyer to get him off with a suspended sentence and probation. His urban counterpart, with an overworked, underpaid, public defender, ends up in the system. Our communities have their standards, what we will tolerate and what we won’t.
What people of color once knew from experience, we all know from Youtube. Lethal force are too frequently applied in a racist and capricious manner. One source of the problem is that statutes set a very low bar for law enforcement. Communities may set certain norms for law enforcement, but laws are supposed to provide a backstop for social norms. In the United States, the law tragically provides almost no backstop.
If a police officer has “probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or other” in Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), s/he can shoot to kill. That belief only needs to be reasonable as it will be “[t]he “reasonableness” of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight” Graham v. Connor 490 U.S. 386 (1989). Thus case law goes a long way in protecting police officers from prosecution. These cases set a low bar for police use of lethal force, and provide the standard for objective reasonableness as a test. It’s important that they only consider the officer’s point of view. In Utah, an unarmed 20-year old was shot and killed by police when he went to adjust his pants. Police were looking for three people that flashed a gun. The 20 year-old was with two friends. He was wearing headphones and not complying with police orders. The shooting was justified. As Amnesty International reports, “No state limits the use of lethal force to only those situations where there is an imminent threat to life or serious injury to the officer or to others.”
I’m no lawyer, but as I understand it, the lack of a statute results in a reliance on case law, which compared to international law and standards, are decidedly weak. I’m not overly concerned with complying with international law, but it’s worth comparing any American system to an ideal. That’s often how change starts. This should be our guiding principle:
“Law enforcement officials shall not use firearms against persons except in self-defence or defence of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury, to prevent the perpetration of a particularly serious crime involving grave threat to life, to arrest a person presenting such a danger and resisting their authority, or to prevent his or her escape, and only when less extreme means are insufficient to achieve these objectives. In any event, intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life” (emphasis added).
There is much more that needs to be done. Police work is not necessarily discriminatory, insensitive, or abusive. Most police do see their jobs as serving and protecting. In many communities, and many instances, their jobs have more to do with social work than criminal investigation. Since the advent of the Quinn Bill, police have become a much more professional group of people, educated and well-trained. It’s time for our laws address all of their roles in the community in all of our communities.
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Final anecdote: A police officer makes a traffic stop. The driver threatens him with a knife. and a car chase through two towns ensues. The suspect is eventually cornered in a strip bar where he brandishes a barbecue fork with 5 inch tines. An autopsy later determines that he is drunk and has used cocaine. The police officer, a 16-year veteran of the force, ends up shooting and killing him.
“An individual, including a police officer, may use deadly force if he has a reasonable belief that he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury,” [District Attorney William] Bennett said.
“Applying this legal standard to the credible facts, there is insufficient evidence to prove that the sergeant did not actually and reasonably believe that he was about to be attacked. … Consequently, no criminal charges will be sought in this matter and the criminal investigation will be deemed closed.”
I remember there being some controversy over this shooting, which took place in Monson. Would the suspect be alive today if police followed used lethal force “”only as a last resort when strictly necessary to protect themselves or others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury”? Would the officer in question have been indicted? The DA’s words echo Garner, but they hardly offer a ringing endorsement of his actions.
I don’t care what kind of community he’s in. Nobody who is inclined to shoot a dog on sight just for barking too loudly should ever have been allowed a badge and a service weapon to begin with. As for reasonable force, maybe it’s just me, but I would do everything in my power to avoid shooting to kill even if I felt threatened. Why not just shoot the guy in the leg to immobilize him?
use force in an imminent threat as necessary way. Most cops, rarely if ever, draw their weapons. They don’t beat people or mace people. There are police departments where that kind of behavior is acceptable, if not the norm. Their communities condone it.
I can’t remember all the details about the guy in the bar. Most towns don’t see a lot of lethal force used. Most cities in Massachusetts see it only rarely.
The cop who shot the guy was actually nominated for a Hanna Award for bravery in the line of duty by his chief of police.
… and handguns aren’t usually all that accurate (match weapons excepted).
shot anyone–say shooting someone in the leg is harder than people think. They also say it’s easy to squeeze off multiple shots under stress.
The shooting at the Monson strip joint was weird. The guy had threatened a cop with a knife at a traffic stop. He was chased, then the cops lost him. He went to the strip joint where he eventually threatened cops with a big ass barbecue fork and one cop–a 16-year veteran–shot him. He received two awards and the state (EOPS) was going to give him one, when the decedent’s family complained. He never got that award. He ended up retiring on disability at age 37. There’s a lot to the story that’s not in the paper, I’m sure. The Monson Police Chief was no rehired, though he also got in trouble for issuing a selectman a gun. (We selectmen are technically police comssioners. I know some selectmen who carry badges with that excuse).
I think I’ve been over this with you or another commentator, but the Mayorsl Fellows went through the Chicago Policy Academy for a shadow day and they answered that question with the maxim that you use full force and sim for center mass (square in the chest) to fully immobilize potential threats. There have been incidents of over excited and unjustified use of tazers in the past as well, but at least those victims get to walk away. But I do agree with officers that there reason for not shooting in the leg makes sense, it does little in the short term to immobilize an assailant.
Plus if you shoot me in the leg there’s a pretty good chance I would stop running toward you, though I understand it’s a harder target.
There are matters of reaction time and accuracy which make it impossible to even consider this as policy. In the real world, the shot wouldn’t hit anything (except possibly bystanders).
Most police aren’t pistoleros. However well trained, most officers don’t have the talent for sharpshooting, particularly with handguns, against moving targets.
But one of the cops cited a specific example from his own experience, where his partner went against protocol and shot an axe wielding abusive husband in the leg, he briefly backed towards the wall and then kept swinging wildly in their direction and even pressing forward while limping. In that kind of situation, they sometimes have no choice but to utilize full center mass force for precisely the reason Paul Simmons and others here have cited.
That said, I do wonder if a policy solution to this issue is to employ tazers and other non lethal devices that can restrain an assailant without killing them.
Another component that we also have to emphasize, and this was especially the case for the Chicago Police I interviewed, the ‘bad guys’ have access to bigger and better guns. We were shown footage from their surveillance camera where the cops were called to a situation were patrol officers with the then standard shotgun in the back of the car and two sidearms for each of the officers. And the camera caught a gang member reaching for a high powered assault rifle hidden in a tree, since they were able to catch it real time the patrol officers dispatched a paddy wagon that was partly armored and equipped with assault weapons on it’s own.
While there was no reason to send surplus military equipment to small town forces like Ferguson, I do have sympathy with the argument that so long as military grade weapons are available to criminals they should be available to cops. Cops should be our best allies for greater gun control, and that is one issue where I think we can make some headway on that front, and then replacing weapons with tazers to at least avoid tragedies like in the Garner case. Avoiding tragedies like Michael Brown or Tamir Rice will require substantial racial sensitivity and civil rights training across the board. There is no way around that.
…that lethal force would never be necessary. It’s just that it seems too often used as something other than last resort and I would want to at least try to immobilize first. Too bad there isn’t a muggle equivalent to Harry Potter’s expeliarmus move, which for the uninitiated is a way to knock your opponent’s weapon out of his hand.
It’s shameful how technology has evolved to make killing easier but hasn’t caught up with life saving alternatives. I’m still baffled why anyone would oppose smart gun technology, if it could be made at cost to regular guns why not mandate it?
Loved that about Star Trek under Gene, he didn’t want his characters killing the native peoples they encountered or engaging in unneeded warfare. Even the Klingons became friends by the time Picard’s crew took off!
the cruciatus curse!
My first choice for unforgivable curses is the imperius curse. If you can just get someone to do what you want him to there is no need to torture or kill him.
Over the years, I’ve had several friends who were active members of various law-enforcement agencies and who carried guns as part of their job.
They said, emphatically, that they were trained according to long-standing experience, something along the following:
– Don’t threaten to shoot (“Stop or I’ll shoot” is movie dialog).
– Don’t pull or show your piece unless you intent to use it.
– When you shoot, shoot to kill. If the situation doesn’t call for that level of force, don’t pull or show your weapon.
My understanding is that these same basic principles are also taught to private gun owners in gun safety classes.
My friends opined to me that “shooting to wound” was far more dangerous than the above policy. ANY discharge of a weapon threatens civilians and potentially the agent themselves. A scenario of “shooting to wound” generally requires more shots, multiplying all the risks.
The bolded part needs to become central to modern policing if we want to see real reform.
The sad part is that the part you emphasized WAS central to policing in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s when I had these conversations with:
– an active MA state trooper
– an active parole officer
– an active local cop (Billerica)
My sense is that America has been gripped by collective hysteria in the aftermath of 9/11.
In many respects, OBL and his Muslim jihadists won the holy war they began. They succeeded in destroying the fundamental assumptions of liberty and freedom that permeated America on September 10, 2001. That liberty and freedom was a central target of their Jihad, and they have been all too successful at hitting it.
9/11 changed everything — much of it for the worse, and nearly all of it self-inflicted in our hysterical over-response.
I will always believe that “disease” was a far more apt metaphor than “war on terror”. In particular, an auto-immune disease. OBL masterfully turned our grief about 9/11 into self-destruction.
…and I’m not suggesting that you think it should. I can see how 9/11 would change our attitude toward airport security or even acts of domestic terrorism, but what does it have to do with how you approach a common street suspect who may or may not be flashing a gun?
We are not discussing how “you” or I would approach a common street suspect. We are instead discussing what you or I expect from police in that situation.
Prior to 9/11, Americans expected their police to act with more restraint than we do today. In the post-911 hysteria, we have become so consumed by “security” and “terror” that we have allowed America to become something all too close to a police state.
The bolded phrase we are discussing is “If the situation doesn’t call for that level of force, don’t pull or show your weapon.”
That was the prevailing standard used by law enforcement prior to 9/11. It is NOT the prevailing standard used today. From your comments here, it is not even the standard you yourself would apply. We have seen numerous episodes, just this year, with law enforcement agents shooting and killing suspects who are NOT “flashing a gun”.
I argue that 9/11 changed our attitude towards police and the attitude of police towards civilians (not just suspects) very much for the worse.
I just don’t understand what seems to be the logic of that suspicious looking guy on the corner just might be an al-Qaeda operative. Besides, aren’t we well beyond the hysterical phase by now? We certainly should be.
I used to have NH’s memorized.
be any statewide, but I just found H2106:
This would be a start. It was filed this session and referred to the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security.
Petitioners: Evandro C. Carvalho, Marjorie C. Decker, Marcos A. Devers, Linda Dorcena Forry, Gloria L. Fox, Carlos Gonzalez, Russell E. Holmes, Elizabeth A. Malia, Leonard Mirra, Frank A. Moran, Denise Provost, Byron Rushing, Ellen Story, Benjamin Swan
It’s not overworked “public defenders” that result in such different outcomes. It’s also the DAs and judges. Defense lawyers don’t get to just demand outcomes and get them. If DA’s don’t agree, and judges don’t agree, it doesn’t happen. It’s the entire system that views urban defendants differently from certain suburban defendants (it’s not equal across all suburbs, by the way).
The public defenders and bar advocates I know worked hard to get good outcomes for their clients, and mostly succeeded. The blame for disparate outcomes shouldn’t be laid on their doorstep – it belongs to the entire system.