FEB. 11, 2016 — Eighteen months after the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., a top police research organization has issued 30 guiding principles on the use of deadly force by officers. Police forces should embrace and incorporate these principles as the modern way to police our streets.
Brown’s killing, and the protests and civil disorder that followed, marked the beginning of an intense, ongoing national debate over police use of force. Subsequent furor over high-profile killings in New York, Cleveland, Baltimore, South Carolina, Chicago and other jurisdictions underscored how widespread the problem is. Yet the FBI, to its embarrassment, doesn’t keep good records on killings by police. That’s beginning to change.
Media organizations, including The Washington Post and The Guardian, began tracking the incidents themselves through media reports and online searches. The Post’s accounting for 2015: 987. The Guardian’s: 1,134.
About 200 police chiefs and other law enforcement experts met in Rosslyn, Va., on Jan. 29, where Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, presented his group’s “Taking Police to a Higher Standard: 30 Guiding Principles.” In 300 or so of the killings tracked by The Post in 2015, the suspect was not armed with a gun. Wexler suggests there are lessons to be learned from those 300 cases.
The principles emphasize two main points: Lethal force must be the option of last resort. Protecting the sanctity of human life should be at the heart of every police force’s mission.
Wexler also urged police agencies to hold themselves to a standard higher than the Supreme Court’s “objectively reasonable” ruling, which holds that officers are justified in taking a life if another officer, faced with a similar set of circumstances, could reasonably be expected to make the same decision.
It’s why officers often cite the fear for their own lives as the basis for shooting suspects, even unarmed ones.
Other principles call for officers to de-escalate situations when possible by repositioning themselves and allowing more time to assess the danger. Some agencies call this “tactical retreat,” meaning it’s better to back off than to take a life if the threat is not immediate. The idea of “retreat” doesn’t sit well with some officers, so “repositioning” is now the word of choice.
Had Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson been taught tactical repositioning, he might have stayed in his police SUV on Aug. 9, 2014, and called for backup. Instead, as he’d been trained, he went after Michael Brown on foot.
“Police officers are Type-A personalities,” said St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson. “We have not taught tactical repositioning. We have a go-go-go attitude.”
Still, he said the guidelines outlined in Rosslyn represent the direction that big-city police departments are heading. Dotson distributed a copy of the guidelines to his command staff on Monday. The city police department should be ready to tactically reposition itself.
