Item: Los Angeles Times Editorial (1/3/16) - “These and hundreds of other Americans who died at the hands of police in the last year and a half ought to have been able to play, run, date, even get into some minor trouble, and still live to tell about it.
“Instead, their deaths are an indictment of policing practices that are woefully outdated and insufficiently examined. And of course they are a reflection of a society and a justice system inextricably bound up with race.
“When police encounters fail - when they result in death - the questions asked in official inquiries are too often limited to whether the officers' actions were “objectively reasonable.
“The appropriate question for police discipline bodies, chiefs, trainers and elected officials ought to be whether officers had, were aware of and could have used alternatives that were likely to result in better outcomes.”
The Facts
I know that the media doesn’t want to hear the facts but I just can’t help myself…
According to the Washington Post (12/26/15):
- 987 subjects were shot and killed by police in 2015
- In three-quarters of the fatal shootings, police were under attack or defending someone who was
o 28% of the subjects were shooting at officers or someone else
o 16% were attacking with other weapons or physical force
o 31% were pointing a gun
*Yet, the Post states, “Many of the deaths of people in the throes of a mental or emotional crisis may be preventable, police and mental-health experts said. Quoting PERF – Police Executive Research Forum, executive director Chuck Wexler as stating, “This is a national crisis. We have to get American police to rethink how they handle encounters with the mentally ill. Training has to change.” Fascinating that the Post reports on the case of Gary Page a drunk schizophrenic subject armed with a gun who stated he wanted the police to shoot him and took a neighbor hostage. After the encounter, in which he was shot dead, the gun was found to be a starter pistol loaded with blanks.
Because we don’t know the mindset of any of most of these mentally ill subjects unless they have articulated their intent to commit police assisted suicide, we are left to imagine why a mentally ill subject armed with a knife would actively charge at officers. The notion that in such circumstances other alternatives could have been employed, as Wexler and the Post imply, is irrelevant. *By the way, I am pro Crisis Intervention Team officer. This is the most telling comment by the Washington Post reporters on these mentally ill individuals shot by police, “The vast majority were armed…”
Fact is that Mr. Wexler has never been a police officer. Lest you think that I am new to PERF, I purchased a copy of Deadly Force: What We Know (1992; PERF) when the book was published. As I recount in my book, Use of Force Investigations, nowhere in this PERF book do the authors, Geller and Scott, refer to Graham v. Connor. Although Tennessee v. Garner is referred to, the authors do not state when an officer can shoot a fleeing felon per the law, but rather argue against following Tenn. v. Garner substituting a more restrictive defense of life standard. It is clear that in 1992 when this book was written and today by the statements made by PERF that they don’t want officers to be held to a legal standard in the use of force and deadly force but rather a social policing standard. In other words, PERF doesn’t not approve of officers having the full benefit, i.e. objective reasonableness that the law allows.
Risk
“One critical and common-sense change would be to adopt a necessity rule. The difference is simple but crucial. Even when the police have a reasonable belief that a person is dangerous, the necessity standard does not permit deadly force if non-deadly or less deadly alternatives are available and adequate to meet the threat.”
Boykin, Desir, and Rubenfeld; Op-Ed, The New York Times, 1/1/16
*By the way, these authors are identified as Yale law students. Rubenfeld is a professor!
You know, it’s funny how much risk others suggest law enforcement officers take! Recently (12/28/15), Jamelle Bouie, “Slate’s chief political correspondent,” opined on the Tamir Rice case in Cleveland and stated, “Blue lives matter, goes the mantra, police have a right to go home safely. This is true, but only to an extent. Part of policing is risk. Not just the inevitable risk of the unknown, but voluntary risk. We ask police to “serve and protect” the broad public, which—at times—means accepting risk when necessary to defuse dangerous situations and protect lives, innocent or otherwise. It’s why we give them weapons and the authority to use them; why we compensate them with decent salaries and generous pensions…” “…when the officer’s safety supercedes the obligation to accept risk. If “going home” is what matters—and risk is unacceptable—then the instant use of lethal force makes sense. It’s the only thing that guarantees complete safety from harm.”
All police officers, regardless of agency and assignment, accept risk. Officers killed in the line of duty (over 100 each year) and over 250,000 assaulted clearly indicate the risk in just putting on the uniform. Further, examining the last ten years of FBI officers killed statistics, we find that, excluding death by ambush, 60% of the officers killed “did not use or attempt to use their own gun.” This as well as other studies published in the FBI Bulletin clearly indicate that officers frequently take too much risk, and are killed or injured as a result!
Accepting more risk – by giving armed suspects (whether guns, knives or impact weapons) or those reasonably perceived by the officer based on the totality of the circumstances to be armed – more time to complete their attack so you can be sure, is asinine.
In Sum
Officers did not swear an oath to commit suicide by felon, when they took their job. Though it is fashionable and trendy to talk of social policing, and limiting officer’s use of force to appease special interest groups, most of the direction from PERF and other social policing proponents comes after an incident. They know what they don’t like when they see it on Monday morning. They are scant with guidelines and suggestions prior to an incident but will readily state they don’t like the law on use of force ala Graham v. Connor.
And an officer’s life is a hell of a price to pay for being trendy…
