Jan. 29--ST. LOUIS -- It's been a violent start to the new year for St. Louis police officers, who have fired shots in five incidents over 19 days, killing one and wounding four. Several instances appear to violate the department's written policies, although Chief Dan Isom said exceptions can be made.
His officers hit suspects with gunfire in 15 incidents during all of 2011. Officers typically fire between 30 and 40 times a year.
"Four is a concern," Isom said in an interview Thursday, before the fifth incident occurred. "But that doesn't mean it's necessarily inappropriate ... We look at these shootings on a case-by-case basis."
In fact, the use-of-force policy begins with a disclaimer: "In exceptional circumstances, violations of the restrictions may be justified by necessity." It generally prohibits firing at or from moving vehicles, or being too quick to pull out a pistol.
Three of this year's incidents involved shots at moving cars. One was the unintentional wounding of a teenager by an officer's unholstered pistol during a struggle.
The remaining one -- in which a suspect was killed -- featured an exchange of shots in which three officers together fired almost 100 rounds.
Isom said continuing investigations look at whether the use of deadly force was justified in each situation and, separately, whether proper tactics were used. He has personally reviewed preliminary reports and some video footage from a patrol car camera.
"Are there things that could have been done differently? Right now, there's nothing glaring," he said. Isom declined through a spokesperson to update his comments after the fifth incident.
Two of the five shootings were in Alderman Jeffrey Boyd's 22nd Ward.
"It is alarming; however, is it justified?" Boyd said Friday. "These officers have a very tough job to do ... They must make split-second decisions when have they have a bad guy willing to pull a gun on an officer or run them over in a car."
He lamented that "too many of the bad guys have no respect for police officers."
Isom noted that the police shootings were in the same general area as the 11 homicides so far this year; there were only two homicides last January.
THE CONFRONTATIONS
Department investigators are continuing to examine the five cases, which involved officers ranging from 25 to 44 years old, with an average experience level of about seven years:
-- At 3:48 p.m. Jan. 8 along the 1500 block of Tower Grove Avenue, officers tried to stop a stolen vehicle. It crashed, and four unarmed occupants -- 14, 16, 17 and 18 -- ran. During a struggle, the 16-year-old grabbed for the gun an officer was holding and it discharged, wounding the teen in the shoulder.
Isom invoked the names of Officers Joe Haman and Lucas Roethlisberger, badly wounded before they could draw their guns, in 2010. The chief also recalled an experience in which he thinks drawing his own sidearm early helped him survive when a suspect pulled out a hidden gun.
-- At 2:20 p.m. Jan. 10, police were investigating three people in a truck along the 6100 block of Martin Luther King Drive when it rammed two police vehicles, swerved toward officers and ran down a bicyclist. Officers opened fire, wounding one passenger in the leg and grazing another as the driver continued to flee until a flat front tire forced him to stop. No weapons were found inside the vehicle.
-- At 9:45 p.m. Jan. 17, police saw a gunman back away from the Northway Supermarket at 5590 West Florissant Avenue and turn toward them. Three officers fired in three separate encounters with the fleeing man, Deandra Pye, 39, until he fell. As they approached, Pye fired one shot at them, officials said. Return fire hit him multiple times. In all, officers fired about 98 rounds, police sources said.
"There is nothing glaring in that incident other than the number of rounds fired," Isom said. "But you're talking about three different officers and three different encounters. We are trained to shoot until the threat is stopped."
-- At 8 a.m. Jan. 24, officers were trying to use tire spikes to stop a stolen 2010 Dodge Charger in the 4700 block of Maffitt Avenue, they said, when the driver showed a gun and drove at them. An officer fired three shots at the vehicle, a police source said. It fled and crashed along the 8300 block of Hall Street. The driver, 23, was unhurt, but his passenger, 25, was shot in the leg. A gun was found inside the car.
Isom said a review of video "doesn't answer all of my questions." He noted, "One option certainly would have been to let them go."
-- At 1:10 a.m. Friday, officers spotted a man, 36, looking into cars at Belt Avenue and Palm Street and followed his vehicle to Belt and Natural Bridge Avenue. They said the suspect backed into their patrol car and showed a gun before one officer fired four shots, missing him. The suspect was later arrested at a gas station near Goodfellow Boulevard and Lillian Avenue. Officers did not find a weapon.
"There are more to these than just a car was coming at them," Isom said. "There are probably some tactics that we'd review, but that doesn't mean everything was wrong."
POLICIES AND TRAINING
Department policies are rooted in practical concerns. For example, Isom said the general prohibition on shooting at a moving vehicle recognizes that a driver "who can't control their vehicle can cause greater injury to other people."
Another policy says, "An officer will only draw or exhibit a weapon when he/she has reasonable cause to believe that it may be necessary to use that weapon."
That connects with a 2009 study of 112 St. Louis police shootings from 2003-07, conducted by David Klinger, a University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist. He found that nearly half included foot chases and many involved "officers getting too close to suspects while holding their service pistols."
Klinger is a firsthand deadly force specialist, who, as a 23-year-old Los Angeles officer in 1981, killed a man wielding a butcher knife who attacked his partner.
When Klinger did the study, St. Louis' only post-police-academy deadly force training was a monthly, computerized policy refresher. He recommended a variety of reforms, including mandatory training on deadly force decision-making and increasing firearms proficiency qualifications to four a year from two.
Isom said the department made changes.
But following them is a challenge, said Lt. Mike Muxo, the policy academy director. "You have to balance the time that officers can go to training with the time they spend out on the street defending the population of the city."
Changes include more defensive tactics training and an extra firearms qualification day, with scenario-based training, Muxo said.
Sgt. David Bonenberger, president of the St. Louis Police Officers' Association, said he has heard others talk of the scenario-based training but has not had the opportunity to take it himself. "I believe our department as a whole needs to address the issue of providing more legitimate training," he said.
Muxo said firearms training should improve this fall with reopening of a much-improved firing range along Gasconade Avenue near Interstate 55. It was closed in 2010 because of a retaining wall problem. The FBI spent about $1.38 million on it, in exchange for 150 weekdays of exclusive use.
There is only limited data linking training to performance, Klinger said. "From an empirical perspective, training is a toss-up. But certain things are so logical that to argue against them is foolhardy."
He said a 25-year-old study in Miami found that officers with scenario-based training used less force than others.
"If you don't have good training and something bad happens, the courts will look at that in a very disdainful way and you will get slapped down if your training records indicate that, 'The last time I got trained was when I came on the force,'" Klinger warned.
He is now in the process of reviewing shootings from 2008-11, at Isom's request. "What I'm aware of is positive," he said. "When a bureaucracy responds to a report that notes deficiencies, that's a good sign."
Copyright 2012 - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
