To Shoot or Not to Shoot

Despite reforms, the police use of deadly force still draws fire

In a Baltimore pizza parlor, a patrolman shoots and cripples JaWan McGee, a black youth, after seeing him reach for a shiny object in his pocket. It turns out to be a cigarette lighter. In Flint, Mich., an unarmed teen-ager fleeing a burglary is shot in the back by a policeman with a shotgun. In Chicago, three plainclothesmen severely beat a former mental patient who refuses to stop smoking in a subway car and resists arrest. Five hours later, he is dead. In Philadelphia, a 94-year-old black man who refuses to let utility company representatives into his apartment is shot and killed when a police officer breaks down the door and sees him clutching a starter's gun.

Across the U.S., an average of two people are killed by the police every day. Many of the fatalities are unavoidable, and indeed a necessary part of law enforcement. Those that are not, however, constitute what critics call a form of capital punishment, carried out with no trial and at times no chance whatsoever for a moment's reflection. In a nation of 220 million people, the number of such killings may seem small, but it is large enough to concern law-enforcement, legal and community groups; it also causes bitterness and violence among blacks and other minorities who believe they are the most likely victims.

In 1968 the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders cited blacks' outrage over police brutality as a prime cause of rioting in ghetto neighborhoods. If any reminders were needed that the problem persists, the past few months' headlines have provided several. The rioting that rocked Miami in May erupted after four white Bade County officers were acquitted of various charges in the beating death of a black businessman. What one Justice Department official calls "the undeclared war between police and minorities" is a contributing factor in outbreaks of violence within the past year in such cities as Wichita, Kans., and Birmingham.

Police authorities in many big cities are trying to lower the death toll by devising departmental rules limiting the use of deadly force and by punishing patrolmen who go too far. Typically, the regulations prohibit such force except under extraordinary circumstances: for example, when a policeman believes that his life or someone else's is in jeopardy, or when there is no other way to stop a violent felony in progress. Many of these new codes are backed up by elaborate review systems that investigate each discharge of a police gun and call for disciplinary action or referral for criminal proceedings if a committee concludes that there was a violation. "Every time an officer uses a firearm," says Lieut. Thomas Flanagan of the New York police department, "he knows that a lot of people will be looking over his shoulder to see if he did right." In New York, fatal shootings by police dropped from 93 in 1971--the year before the department adopted a new deadly force policy--to 28 last year.

Up until this wave of modern programs, the only restraints were those imposed by state laws, which in many cases allowed police to use deadly force to stop any "fleeing felon." The right to kill dates from the days when fewer crimes were classified as felonies and all were punishable by death. Even the more progressive statutes enacted by some states in recent years, however, leave police with broad discretion to decide when such force is necessary, so the adoption of tight local guidelines can make a big difference.

Whatever the applicable laws or departmental rules, the most important restraint on trigger-happy policemen is the rigor with which their superiors enforce disciplinary policy. Says Lawrence Sherman, research director for the Police Foundation in Washington: "The chief can have a restrictive policy and wink at it--and the cops will go on shooting." Police departments in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia have strict guidelines but still rank fairly high in the use of violence.

The greatest progress in reducing the racial tension surrounding deadly force has been made in the handful of cities, such as Detroit and Atlanta, that have elected black mayors. Coleman Young denounced the Detroit police department's "old blackjack rule by terror" during his successful mayoral campaign in 1973. Since assuming office he has more than doubled the percentage of blacks on the force to 35% and instituted an effective board of civilian commissioners, which examines complaints against police. Fatal shootings by Detroit police dropped from 28 in 1975 to 21 last year. Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, who also made deadly force a major issue in his 1973 campaign, has appointed two blacks to head the city's department of public safety since 1974. He can point to a decline in fatal shootings, from 23 the year before he took office to three last year.

Police officers themselves have mixed feelings about the effort to cut down on deadly force. "We don't like it," says one Houston sergeant, "but we do it to prove to the public that we can clean up our act." No doubt very few officers would willingly be responsible for a suspect's death. Yet their work frequently puts them in situations where deadly force all too quickly comes to seem the first and only resort: when a traffic violator suddenly reaches under the dashboard, for example, or when a shadowy figure approaches them in a dark alley. In parts of New York's South Bronx, virtually every child over ten carries a handgun or a knife, and so far this year seven law-enforcement officers have been killed in New York City. The policeman's frustration is summed up by a Dade County patrolman who was assigned to the tense streets of Miami's Liberty City: "They gave me a rifle and told me to stand out on the corner where all the shooting was going on, but they told me not to shoot anybody. Why didn't they just give me a pocketful of rocks?"

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