27 December 2013

Law enforcement officers should shoot less and negotiate more

Earlier this year, the Flathead County Sheriff’s SWAT squad shot, but failed to kill, a suicidal woman who was brandishing a pistol and announcing her determination to force law enforcement officers to kill her. An investigation that followed reported the deputy who shot her twice with his AR-15 assault rifle fired 15 times (a full clip?), hitting a SWAT vehicle at least half a dozen times. According to the Daily InterLake, the report concluded the deputy complied with all policies and procedures, and Sheriff Chuck Curry said no changes in procedure were necessary.

I would not expect Curry to say anything else, at least in public. He’s standing by his deputies. He may, however, quietly make changes to lessen the probability that similar situations lead to gunfire. He should.

None of this surprises me. As Radley Balko observes in Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, our police forces are becoming increasingly militarized, with police departments obtaining vehicles designed for urban warfare, assault weapons such as the AR-15, and adopting more aggressive and harsher policies.

In Why Cops Pull The Trigger: Pulling Back The Curtain On Police Shootings, Nicole Flatow reported that police officers are trained to shoot to kill, and to shoot until their firearms are empty:

Once police turn to their guns, protocol is to aim for the chest or head and to keep shooting until the threat is removed. In other words, they are aiming to inflict grievous bodily harm if not death — not minor injury. So why are police turning to a deadly weapon simply to incapacitate an unknown threat when other, lesser measures, might do?

A good question, and one that ought to be asked locally as well as elsewhere. In the meantime, I recommend that Flathead law enforcement officers begin the New Year by resolving to shoot less and negotiate more when confronted by suicidal women with pistols.