The deadly dilemma: shoot or don't shoot?

FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin,The, March, 2008 by Shannon Bohrer, Harry A. Kern, Edward F. Davis

When law enforcement officers fire their guns, the immediate
consequences of their decisions are realized at the rate of 1,500 feet
per second and are beyond reversal by any level of official review. (1)
--Edward McErlain

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Every day, law enforcement officers must draw their firearms for the defense of the public, fellow officers, and themselves. In the majority of situations, the officers fire no shots because the act of producing a firearm seems to stop the suspect's behavior. Sometimes, however, this is not the case, and the officer is forced to shoot. Because officers possess the authority under certain circumstances to deprive individuals of their freedom by arresting them, it should come as no surprise that sometimes they must use force, even deadly force, to obtain compliance. After all, in more simplistic terms, it often is not the officer's decision to use deadly force but the suspect's actions that require it. (2)

An example to help clarify this could involve a patrol officer who approached a private residence to investigate a trespassing complaint. From inside the house, a man fired several shots at him. Although seriously wounded, the officer returned fire and killed the shooter. However, even when the circumstances surrounding police shootings have clearly indicated that the only option available to officers was the use of their firearms, some segments of society have appeared very critical of such actions. While it is not unreasonable to question what law enforcement officers do, concerned citizens should endeavor to understand that the use of force, especially deadly force, constitutes a diverse issue--an emotional and controversial one. The immense responsibility placed upon law enforcement officers understandably necessitates the intense review of every incident involving the use of deadly force. However, it sometimes appears that these examinations stem from the misguided perspective of what the officer did wrong.

LEGAL OPINIONS

The courts seem to give officers wide deference with the use of deadly force and generally decide in their favor. As stated in Graham v. Connor, police "are often forced to make split-second judgments--in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving--about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation." (3) Add to this mix that if officers incorrectly assess the situation or fail to act, fellow officers, citizens, or the officers themselves may be seriously injured or killed. Officers often have to make decisions in a matter of seconds that others want to second-guess and critique for years. Whereas some segments of society may appear to prejudge officers' actions or question their responses, the same certainly cannot be said of the courts. (4)

In the often-cited case Sherrod v. Berry, the court stated, "When a jury measures the objective reasonableness of an officer's action, it must stand in his shoes and judge the reasonableness of his action based upon the information he possessed and the judgment he exercised in responding to that situation.... Knowledge of facts and circumstances gained after the fact (that the suspect was unarmed) has no place in the trial court's or jury's proper post-hoc analysis of the reasonableness of the actor's judgment." (5)

Police often shoot because they are forced to, and it is a decision usually formed in a very short time period. Interviews with officers who had used deadly force revealed, in most cases, that they made the decision quickly. But, of great importance, up to the point where they actually decided to fire their weapons, they had not considered using deadly force. And, equally interesting, most of these officers still seemed surprised that they had to do so. (6)

OFFICER RELUCTANCE

According to the FBI's annual Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) report, police are assaulted about 60,000 times each year, with approximately 10,000 of these attacks involving weapons, of which 3,000 are firearms. (7) In some of these incidents, officers have had to shoot someone to save other lives, including their own.

Most people outside the law enforcement community generally do not realize that many officers, given circumstances where they could employ deadly force, refrain and hesitate until the last possible moment or do not use it at all. For example, if officers shot and killed 10 percent of those who assaulted them, they would be shooting and killing 6,000 individuals a year. If they shot 50 percent of those who assaulted them with weapons, they would shoot 5,000 people annually. The reality is that police shoot and kill about 350 individuals each year, a number that can illustrate the frequency with which officers refrain from using deadly force. (8)

These statistics--how often the police shoot someone, compared with the number of assaults on officers and how often they are shot--indicate that officers usually are reluctant to shoot, which sometimes costs them their lives. As an example, after a trooper stopped a vehicle for a traffic violation, the driver exited the car and pointed a rifle in his direction. The trooper repeatedly commanded the individual to put down the gun. While the trooper refrained from using deadly force, the driver shot and killed him. This case is one of several published in recent editions of LEOKA where officers, after repeatedly ordering individuals to put down their firearms, were shot and killed by subjects who ignored these commands. Particularly disturbing, some of these incidents were recorded on the victim officers' in-vehicle video/audio systems.