Some 30 years ago, when I was a patrol officer, our use of force policy was pretty simple. A shooting required a weapon capable of GREAT bodily harm or death. A baseball bat, steel pipe, knife, gun, etc.
If a perpetrator was unarmed, we were not authorized to draw firearms and shoot, but rather, were required to rely on baton and/or CS spray.
Today, patrol officers carry tasers. Why this spate of shootings of unarmed suspects? Have the basic use of force policies changed?
There could be a zillion different answers as every agency has it’s own policies.
Also, intentional or not you’re asking us to answer for the actions of those officers who shot unarmed people when it is those officers that need to explain/justify their actions.
With that said, off the top of my head I can think of a handful of reasons to shoot an unarmed subject:
Exhaustion. I’m fighting with a subject and I’m exhausted.
Failure of other weapons. Either a weapon did not have the desired effect or it did not work (empty OC, dead Taser battery, etc.).
Subject attempting to disarm me. Policies/training right now are if a subject attempts to get my any of my weapons it is justifiable to shoot.
I can tell you that about 10 years ago or so inservice training started focusing on officers being more aggressive in force. Instructors actually said (and I quote) “cops aren’t shooting enough people.” Before anyone gets nuts over that, their point was about officers that were in situations where lethal force was justified and not used. Those officers got severely injured or killed. About 2 years after that training started the cases of officer involved shootings went way up, and every one of them (at that time) were ruled justified. Whether the training was cause for that is speculative.
You’re going to get replies to this from people not on the job who learned everything they know from TV and almost all of that is wrong. Also there are the lawyer types and kumbaya crowd who will chime in with their daft view of life as it isn’t.
Plus+ people don’t know how to do math which is why there are lotteries. There are just shy of 1 million cops if you count all law enforcement and each have dozens of contacts with the public each day. That’s 1 cop for every 320 people. By the numbers these incidences actually are quite rare.
I thought Tasers were considered a step down in the continuum of force from batons, because Tasers are less likely to cause injury.
Regards,
Shodan
Once again, it depends on the agencies policies. Tasers are a relatively new tool and some have wedged it in the same level as pepper spray, some have OC, Taser, and baton on the same level, some don’t. Impossible to answer for every department.
Now a question is, what if an officer is trained with something, but doesn’t have it that day? For instance, the agency I retired from did not have Tasers (at that time) though we were all trained in them. The department I work for now has them, but only enough for half of us working. So at the beginning of the shift it’s first come first get and they’re signed out. If OC spray isn’t effectual I would be forced to escalate to baton on a day that I don’t have a Taser.
But these aren’t justifications for why lethal force is acceptable in a situation.
They’re explanations why non-lethal force wasn’t used, but that doesn’t justify escalating.
Or, in non-lawyer talk “Sure, if a guy has pulled a knife on you, and your taser doesn’t work, yeah, I guess maybe you need to shoot him to keep him from killing you. But that doesn’t mean it’s OK to shoot an unarmed shoplifter just because your taser battery ran down.”
In my examples I’m talking about an agressive subject. Someone who is actively fighting, not someone who is just refusing to comply.
Exhaustion. I can’t fight any more and don’t have an avenue to retreat. The agressor will either beat me to death or beat me and get one of my weapons and kill me. This has been shown to be a justified reason to use lethal force in courts.
Failure of weapons. An subject is attacking me and defensive tactics, OC, Taser, and baton have failed to stop them. Situations like this have also been shown to be justification for lethal force.
Shoplifter refuses to put her hands over her head and the Taser has failed to deploy. That alone would certainly not be justification for lethal force.
New Jersey was the last state to authorize the use of tasers. I have yet to hold one although there are a few in the department. The AG guidelines call it enhanced mechanical force.
When I was full time I was trained in it but then we never got them due to budget restrictions. Now I only get one about half the time.
I’m kinda hoping they don’t come out with anything new. I’m running out of room on my belt. When I wear my outer vest carrier I put the holster on the Velcro straps and carry it crossdraw.
To open some space on my belt I got one of those OC attachments for my ASP. But I went through the inert canister practicing with it and decided I don’t like the way it deploys. The button is awkward to use and it adds to the time it takes to spray so I took it off. I have a flashlight attachment now and it works quite nice and it’s quite bright.
I think crossdraw is the only way to go. You never want to mistake one for the other in any situation.
That’s the way the training is. Plus, I think the holders are made for that. Try a regular draw with a Taser in a Blackhawk holster. It doesn’t come out smooth like a handgun does. I think they intentionally make them for crossdraw.
You go after cop with a baseball bat,hammer, pipe, knife or object that can cause bodily harm or death you will get shot.
The use of tasers was never for that.It was to use for someone who is actively fighting and has no weapons.
And this is the way it should be.
The public is misinformed.
Only people who have never been behind the badge would understand how ugly a fight with a suspect can get. Even ‘Cops’ never showed this well. This was one of the parts of the job I really hated. I always knew, my fellow cops would be along shortly, damned shortly, and the suspect would lose, but in the meantime, I am still getting beaten up. Part of the reason I left the job was the routine beatings I endured and the other half was the big babysitter role that I didn’t expect.
With all the talk of agencies buying M4s and armored personnel carriers, I am sorry to hear that tasers aren’t automatically issued.
I will always be a big supporter of the Police and thanks, guys for standing in the gap. Nobody in GQ Public really understands the job and the toll it takes. Thanks.
I have never gotten into a physical altercation in which I did not get hurt. Real life is a lot messier than TV.
One time I was attempting to arrest a suspect in a domestic dispute and ended up with a broken hand. When we went to trial the assistant prosecutor told me how he hated prosecuting assault on officer cases since they were so hard to win. Too many people feel that as a cop taking a beating isn’t a crime it’s just part of the job. Sure enough, not guilty.
I read an article recently that claimed that police shootings were at a 40-year low and that there’s just far more attention paid to the issue by the media nowadays. Let me see if I can dig it up.
EDIT: Actually, I think it was black men killed by police that declined significantly. This isn’t the same article I read, but the statistics look similar: Who Are Police Killing? | Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
I got pepper sprayed by a guy once. Because it was the 1000006th time I’d been sprayed it did not have the effect he wanted and the hammer of the P89 I carried at the time was all the way back and a microsecond from falling on the pin when he dropped to his knees and put his hands up. How he did that before I could completely draw and fire is beyond me. He was allowed to plead guilty to disorderly conduct. Suspended jail sentence $300 fine! :mad::eek::mad:
In the early 90’s 2 guys attacked me with a pipe in a robbery attempt as I was walking to a mail box. I was not on duty at the time but I had just come from a training session and had a polo shirt with the SO’s logo on it. Also I yelled “police stop!!” as I was trying to fight them off. I pulled my Ruger which was empty as I had just come from a training session and intended to reload my magazine with duty ammo at home. (I long ago got shit for that so keep it to yourself!) The bluff worked though and they took off. I ended up with a concussion and a broken nose. Sometime later they were picked up. Misdemeanor battery charge was all they got. 9 months jail (only served 3) no attempted robbery charge, no battery to a peace officer even though I had identified myself as such, no substantial battery charge. One of the guys is now dead. About 4 or 5 years ago he broke into a garage and the homeowner shot him.
Couple of years ago my brother got attacked by an inmate he was transporting to a medical exam the inmate requested! Broken nose, concussion, cracked sinus cavity, off work for 9 weeks. Inmate was convicted of felony battery to a peace officer but only got 6 months in the house of correction instead of the 6 years he was facing.
The only problem with crossdraw is the fact that the grip of the weapon is presented to an attacker instead of being turned away from them. It does present a tad more of an issue in weapon control.
Not really. As I posted before, the holsters are made for crossdraw. Wearing it in the traditional manner makes a regular draw awkward and difficult. On top of that, on the Blackhawks there is a side button that must be pushed at the same time. Adding to an officer taking counter measures makes disarming him difficult. All the Taser training I have seen teaches crossdraw.
I like the TV show cops but I can’t get over how so many people are out of shape both bad guys and officers:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: yes overweight on the show and foot chase not even two or three city blocks and everyone is breathing like long marathon run!!
There was some episodes on cops where the mad guy ran two or three city blocks than could not run any more!!!:eek: he give up and when the cop was arresting him he was complaining he can’t breathe.I’m shocked how out of shape people are today.
I have seen many teens and young youth horsing around on the street play fighting and you can hear them hyperventilating.
It shock that ww3 American soldiers will not be able to run or walk no more than one mile in a day.
That face it Americans are out of shape. It should not be the job of police academy or the army to train you and get you in shape than 5 years later you out of shape again.
It is probably good thing that lot of mad guys today are out of shape as they get caught more in a foot chase or can do more harm in fight with officers if they where in shape.But than there are officers who are overweight and out of shape and get hurt in fight.
Being strong /lifting weights ,being in shape and knowing pressure pain moves are the most important thing in a fight.
If you don’t have one of these you will lose a fight.
Some individuals are capable of causing great bodily harm or death while “unarmed.” When they are acting in a manner that suggests they present a potentially deadly threat to others - either the armed officer, or innocent bystanders - the use of lethal force is justified.
Here is video footage of a police officer fatally shooting an unarmed man. Keep watching until 1:08, and you’ll see why the shooting was justified.
Hmmm… I’m surprised at the low sentences handed out for what I would assume to be a most serious crime. I’m going to make a guess that this is a side effect of plea bargaining. The guy making the decision, the DA, does not actually go out and get beat upon himself; he just needs the perp to agree to something, anything, to close the case with minimal effort. And, with minimum sentence guidelines, the only wiggle room is in the name of the charge.
A taser is a lethal weapon. It has in numerous instances killed people. The lawyers for Taser will then sue to stop the coroner or inquiry from publishing that as an official finding, but death is always a possibility.
Between 2003 and 2007 there were 16 deaths attributed to tasers in Canada, which is 1/10 the size of the USA and probably has a lot lower incidence of taser use. (Typically, security guards here cannot carry tasers to “tase their bro” over hogging a microphone.) A common contributing factor is the overuse - in the referenced incident, the RCMP tased the guy 5 times, even while he was down after the first shot.
I agree LEO’s have a crappy job and when attacked, have the right to use reasonable force to defend themselves. The emphasis on the danger of tasers in Canada after that inquiry seems to have resulted in a much more judicious use of the devices here.