NCJ Number
208673
Journal
Law and Order Volume: 53 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2005 Pages: 38,41-42,44
Date Published
January 2005
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article examines three policy categories regarding a police officer's use of a gun--"must-shoot," "can't-shoot," and "may-shoot"--and considers the variables that influence officer decisions in the latter category.
Abstract
"Must-shoot" situations occur when the threat to an officer's or citizen's life is "immediate," which means that bullets have already been fired by a suspect, a knife has been drawn and the suspect is advancing, or a car is being driven directly at an officer at high speed. Under these circumstances the officer must shoot. In a "can't shoot" situation, there is clearly no threat to the officer by any reasonable measure. A shooting by an officer in such a situation is rare, because it means there is no logical justification for the shooting based on all the observations and circumstances influencing officer perceptions that precipitated the shooting. The most controversial and debated category of shooting incidents involves a "may-shoot" scenario. In such circumstances, there is no "immediate" threat to an officer or citizen, but there can be an "imminent" threat, i.e., the officer perceives events, actions, statements, and other variables in such a way that he/she believes an "imminent" threat is about to become "immediate," requiring the pre-emptive use of deadly force to save his/her life or the life of an innocent victim. It does not matter if a subsequent investigation of the shooting finds that the suspect posed no "immediate" threat. What matters is whether the officer acted reasonably in interpreting various events as "imminent" threats. Officers, however, must be trained to defuse or avoid, if possible, situations that may pose "imminent" threats by curtailing a determination to apprehend and arrest and avoiding reckless confrontations with suspects.