Unacceptable! Police Uses of Deadly Force

Fatal Police Shootings

It is time to “Raise the Bar!”

As the years go by, I continue to ponder this question, “Why don’t the number of persons killed by police in America go down?” So I read the news, reflect on my experience in policing, stay connected with my primary professional organization, PERF – The Police Executive Research Forum, and write this blog. I was an early member in the late 1970s. At that time, we were a small organization of college-educated, forward-thinking police leaders. PERF continues to take on the issues like we did in the 1970s when we were part of a national effort to get the USSC to address the situation of many state laws permitting police to use deadly force against any “fleeing felon.” (Think about teenagers “joy-riding”…) The Court wrote in Tennessee v. Garner (1985): 

“This case requires us to determine the constitutionality of the use of deadly force to prevent the escape of an apparently unarmed suspected felon. We conclude that such force may not be used unless it is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.” 

However, years before this, many of us in PERF had implemented policies and training that prohibited the use of deadly force by our officers even though the law in our states permitted police to do so. Why did we do this? Because we believed our job was to save lives and not to extinguish them. We led with our value about the sanctity of life. Why is this not happening today with the current law in Graham v. Connor, (which wasn’t even a deadly force case)? So far, Graham has been unable to control police uses of deadly force in our nation.

What has continued to perplex me is the issue before us today – why haven’t the numbers of persons killed by police each year going down? Why has this statistic not gone down, since journalists began capturing the numbers after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014?

Journalists reported in year 2023, 1,351 persons killed by police and the year before, 1,269. The ‘thousand” figure has remained constant for the past decade. About 40-50 percent of those shootings involve a suspect with a firearm. That certainly leaves a significant number of these encounters with the possibility of de-escalation and/or the use of less-than-deadly control measures. 

Last week, my PERF newsletter brought to my attention a recent article from Real Clear Investigations that attempted to answer my question. First, let me tell you that these is the arguments that I hear from colleagues who question my position that these numbers must be reduced. 

Here are the arguments that these numbers should be acceptable – they are arguments regarding four distortions: distortions in numbers, media coverage, racial bias, and gun ownership.

1. Numbers. “The number of improper, bad [police] shootings is very small… The vast majority are not questionable… only a tiny fraction of those interactions… some .002% a year.’

2. Media Coverage. “[T]he overwhelming majority of lethal shootings by police involve clear justification. Nevertheless, the media and its audience tend to focus on those deaths where there is no clear justification, or where the claim of justification appears dubious.

3. Perceptions of Racial Bias. “Research also challenges the idea that African Americans are targeted by the police. In 2023, The Guardian newspaper published a dataset – Mapping Police Violence – including not just shootings but all lethal encounters involving police. It concludes that black people ‘were killed at a rate 2.6 times higher than white people.’ But such raw numbers ignore the fact that blacks are more likely to commit crimes…’ 

4. Perceptions of Guns. “Americans have bought more than 60 million firearms since the COVID pandemic, and purchases are rising. But while Americans now own about 400 million legal firearms, the percentage of households possessing at least one firearm has, with ups and downs, remained largely unchanged since 1972 [about 43% of households]. Ultimately, however, the issue of prolific gun ownership and weak permit laws has little bearing on police killings because the guns police encounter are so frequently illegally acquired…

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I will argue, however, that these numbers are NOT acceptable. And here’s why. Within this argument stands Graham v. Connor, a most permissive US Supreme Court decision which permits police use of deadly force in situations the officer deems “reasonably objective” So, the argument against changing the situation (over 1,000 citizens killed by police each year) is acceptable because it is “legal.” But is it MORAL? The rate/population numbers of government-sanctioned violence in our country compared with many other countries is widely at variance. In fact, fifteen times greater than most European countries. [Note: these countries have much stronger laws regarding the possession of firearms and when police are authorized to use deadly force.] Members of the European Union must agree that their police will use deadly force only when it is “absolutely necessary.”]

I argue, and have been doing so for years, that though these shooting may be LEGAL, they are NOT ACCEPTABLE, because they are IMMORAL. They are not acceptable because we have not embraced “sancity of life” as a working value of American policing and, therefore, have not pursued the necessary policies, training and leadership to reduce these numbers by implementing less-than-lethal rules and methods of using deadly force.

What are other nations doing? Let’s look at police use of deadly force around the world by the number of persons killed by police (per 10 million population): 

Top of the list goes to Venezuela with 1829, closely followed by Salvador (1703), Syria (819), and the Philippines (556). We come in at 33 — more than India (12) or Australia (6.5). Which police use the least amount of deadly force? At a rate of less than 2 persons killed by police per 10 million population are Norway, Finland, Germany, Sweden, England, and Japan.

So the argument goes, “What’s wrong with our numbers? We’re not that bad and, after all, the highest court in our land has determined the overwhelming number of these deaths are legal. 

What is wrong with these numbers is they do not demonstrate the respect for life – for the sanctity of life, which I believe is a deep value in our nation. And that is why they are unacceptable.

In response to videos depicting many of these deaths throughout the years, there has been a presidential task force and a report by PERF on the problem. In both instances, it was clearly recommended that that we, as a nation, need to have more respect for life – all life.

In 2015, a presidential task force recommended de-escalation training and alternatives to arrest and for police to “embrace a guardian mindset” (contrasting “guardian” versus “warrior” mindsets existing in policing). 

Police are necessarily guardians, not warriors. They are not to be selected because they are the toughest, but because they are the wisest. Simply put, it’s a lot easier to train a person with a guardian orientation to be a warrior than to train a warrior to be a guardian. I wrote the following in my book, Arrested Development:

“Our police should not look or act like paramilitary troops.  It begins by communities selecting college-educated, emotionally intelligent men and women from diverse backgrounds, sufficiently trained, and who are predisposed to help, serve, and protect others; that is, police candidates must begin their careers with the right attitude and understanding of what they are called to do: to guard, serve, and help…”

The first recommendation of the President’s Task Force on Policing is the most important and one that has been most disregarded.

1) “The sanctity of human life should be at the heart of everything an agency does. 

2) “Agencies should continue to develop best policies, practices, and training on use-of-force issues that go beyond the minimum requirements of Graham v. Connor (my emphases). 

3) “Police use of force must meet the test of proportionality.

4) “Adopt de-escalation as formal agency policy. 5) Duty to intervene: Officers need to prevent other officers from using excessive force.”

Following right behind the President’s report, my professional organization (PERF) released their report, Guiding Principles on Use of Force (2016) which raised the importance of embracing “sanctity of life” as a core value of American policing. They wrote:

“Ultimately, this report is about the sanctity of all human life—the lives of police officers and the lives of the people they serve and protect. The preservation of life has always been at the heart of American policing. Refocusing on that core ideal has never been more important than it is right now.” 

Is change possible? Can an emphasis on training and leadership decrease the number of persons killed by police each year in America? Here’s one example. I strongly believe it is possible, but it will not happen without strong, value-driven, police leaders!

Policing a democracy involves embracing sanctity of life as a core value and that means going beyond the minimal legal requirements for police to use deadly force; that is, “to raise the bar.”

I will conclude with a recent report on police shootings to what is happening in the sheriff’s department in Voluisa County, FL.

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“The former Daytona Beach police chief [Michael Chitwood] was elected in 2016 and he embraced PERF’s ‘Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics,’ a training program PERF offers free… ‘In my first six months in office we had more than a half a dozen shootings,’ Chitwood said. ‘Something had to change. I started looking into it and it was crazy, given how quickly they would return fire, I couldn’t believe my deputies hadn’t wound up shooting each other.’

“The Volusia County deputies had six incidents involving deadly force in 2017, Chitwood’s first year in office, and since then the number has fallen: from four, then two, three, four, and, in 2022, zero…

“The decline and eventual full year without a lethal shooting happened because deputies made the ‘sanctity of life’ their cardinal principle… (my emphasis) …

“[T]he results seem convincing, if not indisputable. Chitwood said the use of force by the department is down by about 50% and injuries to his officers by 62%. The 600,000 people of Volusia County seem to like their new force, too: Chitwood’s been re-elected twice – running unopposed both times.”

You can read the full article HERE.

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The bar can be raised. It can work. But I maintain that this will not happen because of public pressure, protests, city councils — or even mayors… it will, however, happen when police leaders believe life is sacred and must be protected and to lead that value – life is to be protected because it is the right and moral thing to do so.

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Who am I? How do I claim authority in these matters? Read what Journalist Rob Zaleski wrote in David Couper: Beyond the Badge.