The Case for Cops

The Reality of Deadly Force In a nutshell, here is how the police are trained in deadly force. First, despite conventional understanding, the police are not taught to cause the least harm possible. Rather, if deadly force is legally justified, and the officer reasonably believes it is necessary, they are trained to stop the threat. For example, if a suspect is repeatedly ordered to drop a gun that he is holding in his hand, shooting that person in the leg does not solve the problem. Likewise, attempting to shoot the gun out of the suspect’s hand generally only works in the movies. Use of force cases and evolving legal reasoning have established that when the police discharge their firearm in the vicinity of a suspect, they are deemed to have used “deadly force” (and will be legally judged that way) whether they were shooting in the air, aiming at the suspect’s leg, or even shooting at the tires of a suspect’s vehicle. This has led law enforcement agencies to define deadly force as, essentially, any action by officers that a reasonable person would consider to pose a substantial risk of death or serious physical harm to a person (TIACP, 2020). It has, therefore, been established and taught to police officers in academies across the nation that you never discharge your firearm unless deadly force is reasonably justified. That said, when deadly force is authorized, it necessarily means that the officer is in fear of losing their life or sustaining a serious physical injury at the hands of a violent criminal. Serious physical injury is usually defined as the loss of a major bodily function, such as sight, hearing, or the loss of a limb; an officer losing their life is self-explanatory. However, because the stakes of those outcomes are so urgently irreversible and consequential, the officer must shoot center mass and/or at the suspect’s head until that threat has ended. That sounds gruesome; I completely understand the perceptions. It may even sound, perhaps, excessive. But not when the officer reasonably believes they are in imminent danger of being maimed or killed. Nearly all sensible citizens would do the same even without the legal backing afforded to commissioned and highly trained peace officers. Intentionally shooting to “wound” a suspect does not prevent that suspect from pulling the trigger of the firearm they are currently pointing at the officer. Likewise, a suspect armed with a knife, for example, continues to be a mortal threat to the officer until that knife is safely on the ground. Suppose the officer deliberately shoots the suspect in the arm or leg. By itself, that will not prevent the suspect from conceivably throwing the knife at the officer or lunging at and stabbing the officer, potentially, to death. By the way, that’s even if the officer happens to hit where they were aiming while in the heat of battle—a very questionable proposition. If the threat can be ended and the suspect survives, that is a great and preferable outcome. But if the suspect dies as a result of the officer ending a lethal threat (that the suspect elected to pose to the officer), it is tragic, but it is not the police officer’s fault. Everyone needs to appreciate the instinct and the morality of a kill-or-be-killed moment. Also, in the aftermath, the officer knows that he or she had better be able to explain themselves to investigators and, potentially, a grand jury or a court of law. The idea that police officers are nonchalant about taking a life is nonsense. A common controversy in officer-involved shootings is the number of bullets that sometimes strike a suspect. If multiple officers are involved, it is not uncommon for a suspect who was posing a mortal threat to officers to be shot ten, fifteen, or even twenty-plus times. People hear that on the news the next day and immediately envision a scenario far different from what really happened. First of all, those twenty shots from multiple officers were likely fired in the span of about three seconds. So, it is inaccurate to presume that the officers were sadistic or to imagine the scenario unfolding in slow-motion, where officers had plenty of time to ponder every detail of the entire scene between each shot. Then, they repeatedly pulled the trigger long after it was no longer necessary. Most police-involved shootings are measured in seconds, not minutes. Next, officers are trained to shoot until the suspect is no longer a threat. If that means the suspect sustains thirty gunshot wounds, but that thirtieth round from the officer was discharged while the suspect was still standing, armed, and posing a threat, then it was probably justified. Officers are also trained and thoroughly cautioned not to admire their shot. In other words, it would be extremely dangerous for an officer to shoot a suspect who is armed with a gun one time, then pause (if it was unsafe to do so) to see what sort of effect that shot had on the suspect. That is what the public seems to prefer: quick, clean, and the bare minimum of damage. Only in Hollywood, though, can a person be shot once, and it kills them instantly while knocking them twenty feet across the room. In reality, the officer may shoot an armed suspect one time, and if they choose to stop and prematurely assess the damage, the suspect may well get off the next dozen rounds of the gunfight, and the officer will likely be dead. This is why officers tend to keep firing until the suspect either surrenders, no longer poses a threat of death or serious physical injury, or is otherwise incapacitated. Unfortunately, being incapacitated sometimes means death. It isn’t that the officers were hoping or planning to kill the suspect; it’s that the damage that was necessary to stop the attack caused injuries that led to the suspect’s death, whether seconds, minutes, hours, or even days after the shooting. It is common knowledge that a surge of adrenaline enables people to stay on their feet, in attack mode, even after sustaining fatal gunshot wounds. It is not appropriate to place limitations on the police in terms of how many times they are allowed to shoot someone who is still actively trying to kill them. There is no question that in the aftermath of a shooting, the empty shell casings, bullet holes, blood, carnage, and death suggest that perhaps there should have been a better way or a different outcome. However, until armed and violent suspects stop their threatening behavior, police officers are going to continue applying deadly force until that threat is completely neutralized. Officers would greatly prefer never to discharge their firearms in the line of duty because if they do, it means that someone is likely trying to kill them. In the same way, if they must fire, without a doubt, they would prefer only to have to shoot once. However, if the circumstances require multiple shots to end the threat, we should support those officers no matter how many shots they need to fire. Their lives are not less valuable than the armed, criminal suspect’s life. So, it is not the number of times a suspect is hit or the total number of shots fired that matters the most. The biggest question any citizen needs to ask is, did the officer or officers have a legitimate reason to fear that their life was in immediate jeopardy or that they reasonably felt they were in imminent danger of sustaining serious physical injury? Those are the legal standards for police use of deadly force. If the officer(s) were justified in using deadly force, then the number of shots discharged is irrelevant so long as the last shot fired was still justified under those same legal standards.