Deadly Police Force

Deadly Police Force

Executive Summary

Police officers are always being scrutinized. There are no illusions on the part of any experienced officer that his/her actions will not reverberate beyond the immediate scene of an incident. It is an accepted part of the job, an expectation for which every officer must be prepared. Police officers have to articulate, explain and justify their actions, a failure to adequately do so can lead to release of a suspect, civil liability or, in the extreme, criminal charges (Sullivan & Russell, 1985). This latter possibility is more likely to occur with an officer's use of force, particularly deadly physical force. Recent research on police policy and practices led me to a 1985 article in the Policy Studies Review that focused on police use of deadly force. The opening paragraph is as relevant today as it was in 1985.

Over the past two decades, one of the police practices discussed most frequently is the use of deadly force by law enforcement officers. Deadly force, especially the discharging of a firearm by a police officer that results in, or could lead to, the death of non-police personnel, is an issue of considerable controversy, and one that is structured around a number of important dimensions. First, as a society we give the police authority to use deadly force (Pearson, 1978). This power distinguishes the police from any other agency or organization. Police officers have at their disposal the capacity to act as judge, jury and executioner. But even with this grant of authority, it represents a decision of such significance that any time an officer uses deadly force there is a questioning of its appropriateness and in some circumstances its application is found to be unjustified.

Discussion

In the next paragraph of the article the authors cite past statistics on the killing of individuals by police. From 1949 to 1976 there was an average of 283 individuals shot and killed by police annually. The yearly range varied from a low of 184 in 1962 to a high of 409 in 1971 with a yearly variation of 250-300 up to 19763. Some further online research yielded a March 2001 publication from the Bureau of Justice Services, “Policing and Homicide, 1976-98: Justifiable Homicide by Police, Police Officers Murdered by Felons,” which provided more in-depth research and analysis (Owens & Michael, 2001). The study reinforced the numbers I had gathered from two sources, the FBI Uniform Crime Reports and the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), for the years 1991-2008 and filled in the gap of police officer justifiable use of force from 1977-1990.

The eighteen year period of 1991-2008 indicated an average of 358 justifiable homicides by police each year with highs in 2006 of 386 and in 2007 of 398. The prior fourteen year period from 1977-1990 also saw an average of 358 justifiable homicides with a high of 457 in 1980. The initial implication would be that police officers have become increasingly deadly in the 80's, 90's and millennium ...