Furthermore, when police officers use a form of deadly and lethal force, many people believe that officers are result to using deadly and lethal fore without necessarily having to do. However, that is not always the case. Although, officers have to use deadly force when contacting some subjects it is not fair to assume that deadly force demonstrated by the police officer is unjustified.
Especially if the suspect is refusing to comply with the order and commands he/she is given by the police officers. Police officers have information about subjects they are contacting that may not be available to the public. For instance, police officers might be aware that a suspect they have pulled over has been contacted a numerous amount of times and is known for carrying a firearm, being violent towards police officers, etc.
Therefore, an officer might be on edge and on high alert when contacting the suspect and might use a type of force to apprehend the suspect when they choose not to comply with the orders given by the officer. As a result, the police officers actions were justified in using lethal deadly force in stopping the suspect, but since the public isn’t aware of all the information available to the officer, citizens might believe the force was unnecessary.
In addition, in the journal “Dispelling the Myths Surrounding Police Use of Lethal Force” a study found that even though officers are justified in using deadly force to apprehend and stop the suspect they show restraint and choose not to. The study discovered that in 2014, police officers were assaulted 48, 315. Of these 48, 315 assaults on police officers, 13,654 of the officers assaulted had to receive a form a medical treatment (Johnson, 2016).
Furthermore, the study found that 1,950 of these assault were carried out with a firearm, 951 were down with a “knife, sword, axe,” or other type of cutting instrument, 6, 803 of the assaults were performed with a type of dangerous weapons including a “vehicle, metal pipe, etc. ” Despite the fact that the study was conducted to determine how many times an officer is assaulted and would have been justified in using deadly force to apprehend the suspect, the study did not include the assaults on an officer were the perpetrator used his/her fists (Johnson, 2016).
Furthermore, in the state of California, use of lethal force by a police office resulting in homicide is justifiable “when a police officer and those and acting by their command and in their aid and assistance either in obedience to any judgement of a competent court, when necessarily committed in overcoming actual resistance to the execution of some legal process in the discharge of any legal duty, and when committed in retaking felons who have been reduced or have escaped, of when necessarily committed in arresting persons charge with felony, and who are fleeing from justice of resisting such arrest (Amensty International Publications, 2015). ” For example, in 1998 Officer Kyle Dinkheller was shot and killed by a suspect he had pulled over. Officer Dinkheller had pulled a suspect over for speeding, and what would have resulted in a simple traffic ticker resulted in the death of an officer.
While Officer Dinkheller was on a vehicle stop with the suspect, he asked the suspect to exit the vehicle and step back to him, however the suspect began dancing in the street and telling the officer to shoot him. The suspect than ran towards the officer and then ran back to his personal vehicle. Once he arrived he reached into his driver seat, even told he was told not to, pulled out a . 30 caliber M1 carbine, and began shooting at the officer. Even though the officer would have be justified in shooting the suspect when the suspect had run and rushed towards him, he chose not to and unfortunately that cost the officer his life (Owens, 2016). Another controversial issue that emerges when lethal or deadly force is used by officers is that they tend to target African Americans.
The journal “Dispelling the Myths Surrounding Police Use of Lethal Force” compared the number of African American men killed by a police office to the number of police officers killed by African Americans. According to the data found noted in the Washington Post, out of the 990 individuals killed by law enforcement only 258 of the individuals were African-American (Johnson, 2016). Furthermore the study also concluded that in the years 2013-2015 33 percent of the individuals who killed a police offices were African-American. Lastly, the study found that African-American men were 5 times more likely than any other race to kill a police officer, but are only an estimated 3. times likely to be killed by a police officer (Johnson, 2016).
Despite the fact that there is no concrete evidence that police officers target African-Americans when using lethal or deadly force, there has been a rise in outrage due to the incident that occurred in July 2014, when an officer used the chokehold to apprehend the suspect. ,which unfortunately resulted in the death of the suspect. In addition, the death of Michael Brown and also received a lot of attention. As a result of all the attention the killings of African-Americans received, there have been several laws and regulations passed in order to prevent the use of unnecessary lethal or deadly force.
These policies include the “Excessive Use of Force Prevention Act of 2015 and President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. ” The Excessive Use of Force Prevention Act of 2015” was passed to prevent police officers from applying “any pressure to the throat or windpipe which may prevent or make it difficult for a person to breathe (Thompson II, 2015). Punishment for violating this act is only enforced when an officer applies a chokehold to apprehend a suspect of race, color, or of an alien status. In addition to “The Excessive Use of Force Prevention Act of 2015,” former President Barack Obama, passed the “President Task Force on 21st First Century Policing” on December 21st, 2014.
The “President Task Force on 21st First Century Policing” was established and identified and recommended techniques that would be best for police officers to employ if they must result to using a type of force in order to apprehend a suspect (Thompson II, 2015). The President’s Task Force established policies on use of force that require police officers to receive from type of investigative, data collection, and information sharing training. These regulations should be “clear, concise, and available for public inspection (Thompson II, 2015). ” This policy also requires police agencies to collect data on all shootings involving an officer when it is fatal or not. Deadly force used by police officers has been a controversial issue for the past decade. Police officers using deadly force have to follow their departments regulations, in order to be justified in doing so.
As a result of the recent outage that has emerged due to police officers using lethal and deadly force, there have been several policies and regulation created and that police departments have to enforce in order to ensure instances involving lethal and deadly force are kept to a minimum and that the police department is keeping track of the instances that occur where lethal or deadly force is involved. Also, it is important to realize that a police officers are people too and that just like everyone else police officers may get hurt, bleed, and died while serving a community. lastly, police officers’ main goal and purpose is to protect the city and community that they are employed in and to turn home safe and sound to their loved ones, and that their goal is not to target a certain group of people or to shoot kill and individual.