Police use of deadly force: criminology theory and decision-making

Criminology Theory: Why Deadly Force Can Be a Crime

The use of deadly force on the part of police officers has been highlighted in recent news reports. Given less attention are the police officers who could have used deadly force but managed the situation without doing so. Specifically reported in the work of Pinzzotto, Davis, Bohrer, and Infanti (2012) is that "a large number of officers have been in multiple situations in which they could have used deadly force, but resolved the incident without doing so and while avoiding serious injury." (p.1)

Examination of the Use of Deadly Force

Alpert and Smith (1994) report that the United States Civil Rights Commission in the 1980s reviewed police use of force and stated as follows:

"Police officers possess awesome powers. They perform their duties under hazardous conditions and with the vigilant public eye upon them. Police officers are permitted only a margin of error in judgment under conditions that impose high degrees of physical and mental stress. Their general responsibility to preserve peace and enforce the law carries with it the power to arrest and to use force-even deadly force." (U.S. Civil Rights Commission in: Alpert and Smith, 1994)

McCauley et al. (2008) reports that examples of non-deadly police force include "physical contact, holding, hitting: use of pepper spray or mace- chemical weapons; the use of a baton-impact weapon; the use of a Taser or stun gun -- electronic weapon; and the use of 'bean bag impact projectile' -- kinetic energy weapon." (p.2) Other non-deadly weapons include "flashlights, police cars, and barking police canines." (McCauley, et al., 2008 p.2) However, "the moment a police officer hits a person with a flashlight, rams a person or another vehicle with a police car, or causes a police dog to bite someone; these tools instantly become instrumentalities of force, even if one chooses not to use the term weapon." (McCauley, 2008, p.3)

II. Policing Theory

The work of Klinger (2005) reports that social theory "can serve many functions in the public policy arena: Two of the most important in the realm of crime and justice are: (1) guiding the actions of criminal justice agencies and personnel; and (2) explaining to members of the public how and why agencies and personnel act the way they do. (p.1) Klinger goes on to state the fact "One place where social theory has been lacking, however, is in the critical area of deadly force. No decision that an officer can make is more important than the one to pull the trigger, for doing so is an exercise of the state's supreme power -- the ability to end the lives of its citizens. Moreover, the social consequences of exercising this ultimate power can be quite profound, as time and again in our nation's recent history police shootings have led to political upheaval, community outrage, and even full-blown riot." (2005, p.2)

III. Rarity of Officer-Involved Shootings

Officer-involved shootings are reported to be rare since the rules that govern the use of firearms by police officers allow the police officer to shoot in only two types of circumstances: (1) when they have reasonable belief that their life or the life of another innocent person is in imminent danger; and (2) to effect the arrest of felons ?eeing from the scene of violent crimes." (Klinger, 2005, p.7) Police are reported to "infrequently encounter citizens under circumstances in which they have legal cause to use deadly force." (Klinger, 2005, p.6) It is reported possible to build on the general ideas about police-citizen interaction through constructing a "simple fourfold taxonomy that cross-classifies the analysis of officers' tactics against the occurrence of a shooting." (Klinger, p. 6) The taxonomy involves use of a table with cells that correspond to cases in which: (1) officers used sound tactics and thus avoided a shooting that might have otherwise occurred; (2) officers used poor tactics and no shooting occurred -- because the citizen involved did nothing to threaten the officers; (3) officers used poor tactics and had to shoot their way out of danger; and (4) officers had to ?re to protect themselves or others, despite the use of sound tactics. (Klinger, 2005, p.6) A similar taxonomy is reported to have been created by Fyfe (1988) to address the use of force by officers including: (1) "skillful de-escalation,"; (2) "dumb luck," (3) "avoidable shooting," and (4) "unavoidable shooting." (Klinger, 2005, p.7)

Summary and Conclusion

There are established methods that police officers can use to avoid the use of deadly force. These methods have been set out in this study along with the theoretical bases for avoiding the use of deadly force on the part of police officers.