There would probably be broad agreement on the Dope that if a cop has already been shot, and his assailant is firing more shots at him, that the cop is justified in shooting back to prevent further harm. Or, if someone is in the midst of shooting others - i.e., an ongoing school or mall shooting spree, then cops are justified in putting an end to that active threat ASAP.
There would probably also be broad agreement that if a suspect is unarmed and not attacking cops, that cops should hold their fire.
What about the in-between, though? If a suspect is approaching with a knife (or similarly less lethal weapon, like a hammer) and will not stop, is that grounds for opening fire? What if a kid pulls out what looks like a gun and points it at cops (but the cop can’t be sure it isn’t a realistic-looking toy)? What if a suspect opens fire, but hasn’t scored a hit yet?
I’d defer to the police departments of the world who don’t have outrageous shooting statistics – perhaps the Finnish police, or the German police (not as sure about them). What are their rules of engagement and usage of force?
The trouble with hard and fast rules is that when it comes down to it, it’s going to depend. That’s why it should be up to the court. The trouble has been that the courts have traditionally skewed towards the police in these sorts of cases, as well as the inherent danger in the police protecting their own by stifling the evidence or otherwise putting their thumbs on the scales of justice. THAT is a problem that should be fixed, for sure, as it’s the check to this. Otherwise, you’ll get a lot of increasingly intricate rules about ‘under what circumstance should a cop shooting someone be justified?’ where cops have to jump through hoops to figure out, in a split second, if they should or shouldn’t use lethal force.
Why would you use them as an example? Seems like apples to oranges, since they are policing in different countries with completely different threats and issues. It’s like saying that cops in a US mega city should be guided by cops in some rural hamlet of 50 people.
I guess to generally answer the question in the OP, if a police officer feels their life or the life of someone else is threatened then lethal force is ‘justified’. The problem here is determining if the police officer in question REALLY thought that their life or the lives of others were in real danger.
One thing to remember is that places like France, Germany, and Canada, have not permitted their citizens to go around carrying guns everywhere.
But yes, only if the cop has a REAL reason for thinking his or someone else’s life is in danger. I would use the same criterion for someone who kills a cop. Like being in the same zip code as the cop and being black puts your life in danger.
I’d assume it comes down to a reasonable expectation of imminent serious harm to the cop or others. Combined with an obligation to retreat to the extent practicable.
So (just one example) the guy comes at you with a knife - it makes a difference whether the cop is in an enclosed room, vs a street where he can back away while monitoring the situation and calling for backup. Guy as a knife and is 20’ away from you or anyone else - ZERO justification to shoot.
What I see as the most challenging situations are those that develop rapidly, and tempers are high, with people taking actions that COULD be interpreted as threatening. The so frequent “reaching for a cellphone.” I also perceive that many situations GET to that point because too many cops unnecessarily escalate routine situations - such as routine traffic stops.
Nope. This is what we’ve got now and it gives too much leeway.
The situation has to warrant it in its entirety. It’s not good enough for the cop to believe there was iminent danger, there actually had to have been iminent danger. If an examination of all
the evidence after the fact shows that there was no iminent danger then the shooting is not justified.
In France the police (Law enforcement in France - Wikipedia) are regularly armed, however, there is no official record of how frequently firearms are used.
Police in Canada certainly carry guns. My Uncle carried one.
In some countries including Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, , the United Kingdom…, the police do not carry firearms unless the situation is expected to merit it. A survey conducted in Great Britain in 2004 found that 47% of citizens supported arming all police while 48% were opposed to the idea.
The UK is the last major nation without constables carrying guns. But the UK certainly has armed police. Just that the guy walking the beat has a baton, mace, etc, no gun.
What would the consequence of that be, under this hypothetical rule? If a police officer, in good faith, shoots someone that he reasonably, but mistakenly, thought posed an imminent serious threat to the officer or others, what would happen?
Also, what would qualify as no imminent danger after the fact? If the suspect had a realistic looking toy gun? If the suspect had a real gun, but it was not loaded?
OK - we disagree. The application of “reasonableness” is effectively applied in countless legal situations. Not sure why it is impracticable in this one.
As far as I would imagine, the issue would be in how you define what is and is not reasonable. It is not as simple as what the cop “believed”, but whether that belief was reasonable, given his training and the totality of all facts. My personal opinion is that LEOs ought to be treated as experts in their field, held to a considerably higher duty of care than an average person.
I’m not sure how what you suggest is remotely workable. Not sure how many real-life situations exist in which
A whole lot of debreifing, a whole lot of retraining. Hopefully something that can be learned to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
If it seems as though it was in good faith, but completely wrong, then this individual may not be best suited for this job, and while he may not need to be prosecuted, he may need to stop patrolling the streets with the force of the govt.
In other threads, we have talked about how when things go wrong in medicine, or in flight, that there is extensive investigation into it. Not to assign blame or wrongdoing, but to try to prevent the situation from happening again.
Now, personally, I do think that cops have chosen to take on the role of protectors of the community, and that does come with some level of risk and responsibility. I do think that they should wait until it is at the very least very clear that the subject has a gun and plans to use it, and if that means that the subject gets the first shot off, then that’s how it is.
I don’t expect this to be a popular opinion, but I do think that one of the duties of a cop is to put the safety of the community above that of their own.
I want those thoughts running through the cops head at the time he/she makes the decision to shoot. Right now cops are rigorously trained that the world is a very dangerous place and every encounter has the potential to kill them. So if they see a perp which has either a gun or a cell phone and they can’t for sure tell which, it’s better to shoot him just to be safe. We need to up the ante of consequences so that they also think “but what if I’m wrong?”
In actuality, far from being an occupation where death is always just a heart beat away, it is a less dangerous job than grounds maintainance, and about half of the police deaths aren’t caused by armed criminals but by driving accidents. Police kill 20 times more people , than people kill police. So I would like to see the bar raised from “I thought I was in danger” to “I knew I was in danger”
I think this is cop propaganda – that the circumstances of the US are somehow unique and thus justify the hundreds and thousands of police shootings that don’t occur, even in a tiny fraction of the amount, in most other wealthy countries. I don’t buy it. Law enforcement doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt in the US – it’s a failed institution, and needs to be broken down and rebuilt from the ground up. Emulating countries without rampant police brutality and killings is a reasonable starting point.
The OP is focused on whether a shooting is “justified”. I think this whole framing of the issue is wrong. The fundamental problem here is not our inability to assign blame correctly when someone dies in an encounter (whether a suspect or a police officer). We should be completely overhauling policies & procedures and training police officers to minimize the likelihood of such outcomes in the first place. Perhaps with better screening of candidates to ensure that they are temperamentally suited to the job.
In Germany, for example, police recruits are required to spend two and a half to four years in basic training to become an officer, with the option to pursue the equivalent of a bachelor’s or master’s degree in policing. Basic training in the U.S., by comparison, can take as little as 21 weeks (or 33.5 weeks, with field training). The less time recruits have to train, the less time is afforded for guidance on crisis intervention or de-escalation. “If you only have 21 weeks of classroom training, naturally you’re going to emphasize survival,” Paul Hirschfield, an associate sociology and criminal-justice professor at Rutgers University, told me.
I would also like to add that, even if a person is pulling out a gun and pointing it at the cop and pulling the trigger, and bullets are coming at the cop and even impacting the cop and killing them, that doesn’t always mean that shooting them is justified.
Just as if you are at a bar, and you start a fight with someone who now is posing a threat to you, shooting them is not justified, a cop who escalates a nonviolent situation into a violent one is not justified* in shooting the person that they have antagonized into violence.
If a cop cannot handle a nonviolent interaction without violence, then they shouldn’t be on the force.
*keep in mind the OP said “should”, not as currently stands by law and precedent.
Right, one kid was shot by police. He had a very realistic soft pellet gun, which had the orange barrel thing removed. He was pointing it at people, then the police. Now, given the kids age, i think the cops shot too soon here.
But they make realistic replica guns that have been used to hold up banks.
Yes, but there is a difference between a cop not being able to distinguish whether an object is a gun or a phone, than when it is clearly a realistic fake or unloaded gun, no?
I have to disagree with the tenor of several responses. Tho I have not studied this, a horrible percentage of the recent “deaths by cop” I’ve been aware of have been ENTIRELY unjustified. Cops shooting motorists they’ve stopped never having seen a gun, or a man walking down the street with a knife, or a man eating ice cream in his own apt, or most recently a guy in his back as he was entering his car. And that doesn’t begin to count the Bland “suicide”, various choking and beatings…
How many - if any - of the recent shootings have come even CLOSE to what a reasonable person would consider justified? Where a gun was actually pointed at a cop, or another person was in immediate apparent danger?
I also acknowledge that dealing w/ mentally/emotionally impaired individuals is a great challenge. But having said that, I have pretty limited sympathy for ANYONE who is carrying a gun (or other potentially deadly weapon) and uses it threateningly towards the police.
So, ah, you don’t believe that the US murder rate is higher than in, oh, say France? Or the UK? That’s all just propaganda?? Or that violent crime is higher in the US than in, say, Germany? This is a police conspiracy??
