Lethal force should be used when the officer can reasonably conclude that his life and safety or that of a third party is in danger. Given the pace at which events can happen, that conclusion may have to be reached as a split-second decision. There will be times when, in the aftermath, what was thought to be a lethal threat turns out not so. All the same, officers and armed citizens need to be held to no higher standard than what a reasonable person would conclude in the same circumstances.
With respect to less-lethal weapons, there are some problems associated with their use. They aren’t completely effective; neither are regular weapons, but the less lethal ones don’t offer the incapacitation that a marginal hit with a bullet can.
They require the officer, generally speaking, to be very close to the target; often within contact range. They can unpredicatably be lethal. They have their place. They’re especially useful when dealing with subjects who are not armed with a projectile weapon. One of the coolest toys I ever got to play with through the Sheriff’s Office is a pepper gun. It is not too different from a paintball gun, except that the balls it fires contain a powdered capsicum preparation. It is just the thing to deal with a knife or club wielding subject, particularly when several pepper guns can be deployed simultaneously. For use against a firearms-using subject… don’t think so.
The standards for suicidal or mentally disturbed people should be exactly the same. Does the person present an imminent deadly threat?
I don’t care if the person waving the gun around and threatening to shoot is crazy, suicidal, or trying to escape. It makes no difference what they think they’re doing waving the gun around, if they are a deadly threat they need to be met with deadly force. It doesn’t matter if the person is bipolar and thinks the cops are Venusian Reptoids, what matters is that he’s got a gun. Suicidal people too. In my opinion, a suicidal person is MORE likely to shoot people randomly than someone who wants to live another day.
Now, just having a gun isn’t a deadly threat. Suppose the kid had come out of the bathroom with the gun, but didn’t raise the gun? Then he’s not (yet) a deadly threat. Same with a toddler holding a gun. Is the toddler able to lift the gun? Is he able to pull the trigger? Is the gun pointed anywhere near anyone? Can the toddler be reached quickly?
The deadly threat has to be reasonable. I don’t think a toddler can reasonably be considered a deadly threat, even if he’s got a gun. But a 10 year old kid surely knows what a gun is and has some idea of how to use it. That doesn’t mean you shoot the kid on sight…just that the age of the kid matters only in determining whether the officer reasonably believes there’s a deadly threat.
And in general, the guidelines for when police officers can use deadly force are pretty similar to the guidelines for when private citizens can use deadly force. The main difference is that private citizens have a duty to retreat if possible when threatened with deadly force and can only respond with deadly force if there’s no way to retreat.
This is trickier. Whether the person made a rational decision or not, the fact of the matter is that in your hypothetical, they are still threatening someone with lethal force; be it a cop or a civilian.
If their “instability” isn’t readily manifest through behavioral cues, the police (or civilians in the case of self defense) have no reasonable basis to doubt the word of the one threatening them; if their “instability” is manifest somehow, then the person being threatened has even more reason to be afraid, for that very “instability” tell the threatened that the person threatening them is not playing with a full deck, and may in fact be capable of doing literally anything.
In the case of the mentally ill, I would say, quite frankly, that whether or not he can reason is irrelevent. Because in this case, no one is shooting him to PUNISH him, as would be the case with the death penalty. The point of shooting him is to STOP him. If it kills him, that’s unfortunate and tragic, yes. But to not do so would be worse, if he were to start firing on innocent bystanders.
Look at it like shooting a rabid dog-you’re trying to eliminate danger in the only way possible. Someone waving a gun around who is NOT thinking clearly is probably about as dangerous. Because they CANNOT be reasoned with.
I hate in this case to compare humans with animals, and I’m NOT saying that the mentally ill are dogs. Just that the danger may be similiar.
The danger may be similar, but do we apply similar judgment to folks in similar situations? A trucker who’s lost his brakes on I-40 outside of Asheville who still has steering may put people in great danger by continuing to stay on the road. Shooting the driver as he comes around a bend would force him to lose control and go off the road, removing the danger from other drivers. But nobody would suggest killing the driver in these circumstances. The driver does not intend to put anyone in harm, although he clearly does, and so the idea of killing the driver to save others is appalling
This is why I believe that we must consider intent, if we can. Few people would object to shooting a bank robber who’s got a gun to a teller’s head, if that shot can save the teller: the robber’s intent leads to an attitude of “He made his bed.” But many people would object to shooting a child who’s picked up a real gun thinking it’s a toy.
I’d like to refer people to the large font above before anyone points out that the child with the toy is not equivalent to the robber with the gun.
I’ll take a look at those Denver regs tonight. Thanks for pointing out, John, that they’d form a great basis for debate; you’re absolutely right. And thanks, Who_me?, for digging them up!
Well, I’m familiar with I-40 in that area, and with quite a few roads in hilly/mountainous areas. There are regular turnouts with soft gravel for truckers to “ditch” their vehicles should they lose brakes. To date, I know of no trucker who has lost brakes and continued down the mountain with wanton disregard to human life. If you can provide some examples of some who have, I might give this scenario more consideration. But on face value, I believe it is a false dichotomy.
And I’m certain that the overwhelming vast majority of police do attempt in some fashion (as the scenario allows) to ascertain intent. I doubt many police officers willfuly blow away toddlers who accidentally happen upon Mommy’s and Daddy’s gun in the nightstand. Toddlers and young children may not grasp the realityof the device they hold in their hands, and I’m sure that police officers would hesitate to blow away a 7 year-old without first trying to reason with him/her and coax them into putting the gun down.
The teenager in question was not mentally deficient; he wasn’t a special-ed case. He was a distraught, suicidal young man who, if not entirely clear-headed, still consciously chose to take a toy/pellet gun, alter its appearance to resemble a real firearm as much as possible, and then threatened other people with it in an attempt to get someone else to shoot him. Mission accomplished.
I’m not sure I buy the “emotionally deranged” argument in his case if he was able to carry all that out in a premeditated fashion.
If he had just picked up the pellet gun, without altering it, with the bright orange barrel cover in place, and was still shot, I’d be calling the police idiots.
I don’t know about studies, but I do know that a tazer that shoots one of those wire things does not have the range or number of shots as a firearm.
Other less than lethal weapons like beanbag or pepper spray guns just inflict pain on the target and knock them off balance. They can still fire back if determined in many cases.
Even a fatal shot from a pistol might not bring down someone instantly.
I think less than lethal weapons are best used in standoffs where a lone perpetrator might have a non-ranged weapon like a knife or bat.
This is obviously a topic that can generate a lot of slippery slope arguments and straw man scenarios (witness the responses thus far). I’m not sure I have a definitive answer to the question either, but I suggest the following starting point for my own ethos: Police should follow the same ethical standard as anyone else with the capability of applying lethal force, within the context of their duty to protect the public and with all of the responsibility that lethal force carries with it. More to the point - I don’t think that a blanket statement about when to use lethal force and when not to can be devised because there are simply too many variables (again, witness the responses thus far).
I believe that a human being has a fundamental right to self-defense and this includes the right to defend other innocents. In the case of police and other peace officers, you add the responsibility to defend other innocents. The only factor that I think would need to be universally present to justify the decision to use lethal force is a clear and immediate danger. Mitigating factors need to be applied on a case by case basis, such as intent and availability of other means of intervention.
In the case of the kid that commited suicide by proxy by aiming an airsoft pistol at a police officer, I believe that clear and immediate danger existed. i.e. - there was no way for the officer to know with certainty that the kid’s weapon fired plastic pellets or lethal rounds. No other means of intervention was practical once the boy “took a tactical stance” and aimed the pistol. The kid clearly communicated his intent to fire on the officer by aiming the pistol. This combination of circumstances leaves the officer with very little time to make a decision and carry it out. Knowing that there is a realistic possibility that he or someone else was about to be shot by the kid, the officer decided on the only course of action that eliminated the danger to himself and others. He made a painful, but justifiable choice, that will probably haunt him the rest of his days. We’ll probably never know the outcome, but it could easily cause him such stress and anxiety that he will never be the same, and could feasibly end his career. I don’t envy him.
It also needs to be said that police officers are human. The weight of their responsibility is staggering to me. Accidental shootings and cases of mistaken circumstances can and do happen. Amadou Diallo is a classic case. I can not possibly conceive of the emotional trauma to an officer who has shot a suspect by mistake. When public outcry reaches such a level (as it did in the Diallo case) that the officer(s) are forced to defend their actions, it creates the impression that they are trigger happy and paranoid. Most of us find it hard to empathise, having never been in a situation where we’ve had to confront a potentially dangerous suspect in the dark, with little information and only our training and instincts to guide our decision making. That makes it easy to separate them from their human nature. I make mistakes on the job more often than I’d care to admit, but fortunately for me, very few of them have life-or-death consequences. That’s an immense weight of responsibility that few of us can fully relate to. I think that any discussion of this topic needs to take that into account.
The case of the runaway truck is missing the point of the right to use lethal force.
Officers are not granted this right so that they can shoot people, it’s so that we can pardon them for protecting themselves.
Certainly no one on the sidelines will say to shoot the driver, but if someone in imminent danger of being run over has a gun in their hand and makes the split-second decision to shoot as an act of self-preservation then no one can really blame him. Making it so that we can legally not blame people for acting in self-preservation just makes that a bit more cut and dried. And in the case of police officers where part of your job description is to place yourself in imminent danger of being killed, knowing that you have the final right to preserve your own life is really a necessity for their peace of mind I would assume.
And going back a bit, your examples of shooting a child or someone who had all of two brain cells waving a gun: No one is saying “Yep, go ahead and blow him away.” not even implicitly. We are simply saying that we realise that any non-suicidal individual is going to act first to protect himself and his family. The consequences of that isn’t and shouldn’t be legal–there will probably be enough guilt felt by the individual that laying blame on them would simply be cruel.
Personally I consider a toddler with a gun to be a child who is in peril. Just like a child in a burning building or a child that has crawled out onto the ledge of a building. I’m not a police officer or a fireman. But I’ve always hoped, and I think most of us hope, that if we were ever in the situation where a kid was in a burning building and the firemen/police weren’t there, we’d have the bravery to do what was right and attempt to save the child. Eventhough it would present a grave risk to ourself.
The same thing with a toddler who has a gun, eventhough it may present a grave danger to myself, I would attempt to grab the gun from the toddler and would never shoot the toddler.
However, this only goes so far when we’re talking about the “innocent” or the “defenseless.” I’ll get right to the issue, Chris Penley wasn’t a toddler. While he may (or very likely may not) have been mentally ill, he wasn’t “out of his mind” to the degree that he wasn’t capable of understanding the situation he was in.
And some of it is just the “unfair” differences between a toddler and a 15 year old. Or even a toddler and a 35 year old man who is truly psychotic and doesn’t know what’s going on. Most guns would be difficult for a toddler to even hold correctly, let alone cock and fire. Toddler’s have poor motor skills and are not as developed mentally. I could stand back from a safe distance and throw toys at the toddler, hoping to distract him so I could grab the gun from him or hopefully cause him to drop the gun.
With a 35 year old man who is truly psychotic, has no idea what’s going on etc, he can actually aim and fire the gun nonetheless. He can actually storm my position if he chose to do so. In the case of a 35 year old man who was psychotic I’d attempt to contain him without confronting him (just as the police did with Chris Penley.) Obviously if I was a police officer I couldn’t allow him to escape out of a contained area, I couldn’t allow him to become a grave threat to the rest of society. And agian, it’s all based on situationals.
If I’ve got a guy contained and don’t have to be exposed to his fire, I’ll try to use tear gas, pepper balls et cetera. If he’s running down the street firing off rounds from an Uzi, the constraints of time and logic prevent me from doing things I’d otherwise be able to do I’d have to shoot him then to protect the people on the street.
Those turnouts exist, but it’s not super-rare even today for a trucker to lose their brakes on these roads. One night I was trapped around mile marker 91 for about four hours because a trucker lost his brakes, skidded around a corner, and overturned with a load full of metal pipes across the highway. I don’t believe anyone died, but that was sheer good luck.
Again, I do not intend to suggest that the police acted poorly in this case. I agree that they did the right thing. I’m interested in the parameters of lethal force more generally.
On the contrary:
My apologies if I missed anyone, but these folks all seem to be saying, explicitly, to go ahead and blow away a mentally retarded person. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding their statements, but these look pretty straightforward to me.
GWVet, I’m raising neither slippery slope nor strawman arguments. I believe you misunderstand either the nature of my questions or the nature of those fallacies. If you’re talking about slippery slopes or strawman arguments raised by others, could you please elaborate?
I have doubts we’ll be able to find any information. The information would have to be compiled on a case-by-case basis, reports would have to mention whether someone who was shot with a less-lethal weapon continued to operate, and those reports would have to be compared with reports that mentioned if people struck with lethal force continued to operate. That data would have to be taken from its report form and quantified, compiled, and then compared.
Given the nature of police reporting of incidents and such I’d be surprised if this data was available in a format that is useable to use.
I can make some generalizations, though.
There are quite a few forms of less-lethal force. There are physical, chemical, and electrical forms as well as a few that are combinations of both and even some auditory forms.
For example you have:
-Straight-out hand-to-hand combat
Limited due to necessitating direct contact with the person. Limited in that you subject yourself to blows from the person. Limited in that it’s difficult to counter a gun at long-range with a punch.
-Nightsticks/billyclubs/batons et al.
These give the advantage of putting you one step above a guy swinging his fists. The disadvantage is the requirement of proximity, and baton’s can kill, too.
-Beanbag round
This was a popular one in the trainwreck threads but it has the following limitations
*At close range it’s effectively a lethal weapon itself
*When aimed or directed at the chest it’s considered a lethal weapon. As it is designed to be fired at the extremities it requires more finesse and skill than firing hitting someone in the chest with a regular round.
*Limited range compared to real bullets
*Limited rate of fire, they are primarily fired in a shot-gun manner.
One shot from a bullet and one shot from a beanbag round may leave someone able to fight. Six shots from a gun into the chest area is practically a guaranteed kill, especially if the heart or major arteries are hit as that will cause immediate and undeniable incapacitation.
Six shots from a beanbag round don’t offer either that degree of certainty nor can they be fired off at the same speed as a handgun’s six rounds.
You can always miss, though, but that’s true with any weapon.
-Rubber/Plastic bullets
They have a comparable rate of fire to a real weapon. The limitation would be again, six shots to the torso from a plastic bullet I would imagine doesn’t offer the same degree of certainty. You want the highest degree of certainty you can get when you may be facing lethal force yourself.
-Pepperball
Same thing as the rubber/plastic bullets, really. Sometimes the pepperballs don’t break and then they are effectively the same as being shot with a regular paintball gun, most people who have been hit with a paintball gun will tell you it wouldn’t be enough to stop them from doing something they really wanted to do (ie shoot someone.)
Pepperball’s also have the problem of beanbag rounds in that they can become lethal at close enough range and they have less range than a standard gun.
-Pepper spray
Proximity problems, and it’s easy to gas yourself
-Tear gas
Isn’t very precise, would be useless if you didn’t have cover from which to throw down a tear gas canister.
Useful in some situations, wholly useless in others. If you’re wanting to take a guy out who is barricaded in a bathroom it may or may not be a good idea. It may just force him to run out gun’s blazing.
Also, I think the Russian military killed a lot of people with tear gas during a hostage situation, it’s not perfect as a less-lethal weapon.
-Flash/sound grenades (flash-bangs, stun grenades et al.)
These are often used as a precursor to lethal force when police have to storm a room and want a tactical advantage. They can actually cause pretty serious damage.
And like with a tear gas canister, these are imprecise, no use at taking out someone standing straight in front of you with nothing in between who’s pointing a gun at you.
Iraq War type stuff:
This is the stuff we hear about being used over in Iraq. The microwave “pain beams” the “sound cannons” the “pulse weapons” et cetera. I don’t know enough about these to comment, but I think most of them aren’t available to law enforcement.