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Ohio Grand Jury Tosses Murder Charge: A female security officer, who
made the mistake of opening her front door to see what was going on
outside, has been cleared of murder charges by a grand jury. She had
been threatened by one of the participants in the disturbance in the street.
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/03/25/20060325-D1-00.html
---
'Tis An Ill Wind That Blows No Good": An accidental shooting of one
teenager by another appears to have uncovered an aborted a plot to shoot
up a school in the State of Washington.
http://www.komotv.com/stories/42599.htm
---
From Force Science Research Center:
Force Science News #40 March 20, 2006
=======================================
The Force Science News is provided by The Force Science Research Center,
a non-profit institution based at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Subscriptions are free and sent via e-mail. To register for your free,
direct-delivery subscription, please visit www.forcesciencenews.com and
click on the registration button. For reprint clearance, please e-mail:
[email protected].
=======================================
In this issue:
I. WHY SHOOTING TO WOUND DOESN'T MAKE SENSE SCIENTIFICALLY, LEGALLY OR
TACTICALLY
II. ADVANCED INSTRUCTOR SEMINAR OFFERS LATEST ON USE-OF-FORCE ISSUES
=======================================
I. WHY SHOOTING TO WOUND DOESN'T MAKE SENSE SCIENTIFICALLY, LEGALLY OR
TACTICALLY
Do police officers really have to kill people when they shoot them?
Couldn't they be more humane and just aim for arms or legs?
As we reported in Transmission #39 [2/28/06], a New York state senator
in pondering these questions decided there's way too much needless death
being inflicted by cops these days. So he introduced legislation that
would require officers to try to shoot suspects' limbs when using deadly
force. Officers who employed any more than the minimum force necessary
to stop a life-threatening offender would face felony manslaughter charges.
Hammered by livid law enforcement protests, Sen. David Paterson
[D.-Harlem] withdrew his bill [see FSN Update 3/1/06], but the sentiment
behind it seems to remain firmly embedded in many civilian psyches.
"When I encounter civilian response to officer-involved shootings, it's
very often 'Why didn't they just shoot him in the leg?'" says Dr. Bill
Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Research Center at
Minnesota State University-Mankato. "When civilians judge police
shooting deaths--on juries, on review boards, in the media, in the
community--this same argument is often brought forward. Shooting to
wound is naively
regarded as a reasonable means of stopping dangerous behavior.
"In reality, this thinking is a result of 'training by Hollywood,' in
which movie and TV cops are able to do anything to control the outcomes
of events that serves the director's dramatic interests. It reflects a
misconception of real-life dynamics and ends up imposing unrealistic
expectations of skill on real-life officers."
In this transmission, Force Science News offers a "position paper" on
why shooting to wound is neither practical nor desirable as a
performance standard. We hope this information proves useful to you in
addressing any shoot-to-wound advocacy that may arise in your jurisdiction.
PRACTICAL ISSUES. Sen. Paterson said his proposed legislation was
motivated by the fatal shooting in New York City of Amadou Diallo, who
was struck by 19 bullets when officers mistakenly thought he was
reaching for a weapon as they approached him for questioning. Paterson
believed that shooting an arm or leg would tend to stop a suspect's
threatening actions, precluding the need to shoot to the head or chest,
where death is more probable. By requiring only the least amount of
force needed to control a suspect he apparently hoped to reduce the
likelihood of "excessive" shots being fired.
Studies by the Force Science Research Center reveal some of the
practical problems with these positions. Lewinski explains some of the
basics of human dynamics and anatomy and the relative risks of misses
and hits:
"Hands and arms can be the fastest-moving body parts. For example, an
average suspect can move his hand and forearm across his body to a
90-degree angle in 12/100 of a second. He can move his hand from his hip
to shoulder height in 18/100 of a second.
"The average officer pulling the trigger as fast as he can on a Glock,
one of the fastest- cycling semiautos, requires 1/4 second to discharge
each round.
"There is no way an officer can react, track, shoot and reliably hit a
threatening suspect's forearm or a weapon in a suspect's hand in the
time spans involved.
"Even if the suspect held his weapon arm steady for half a second or
more, an accurate hit would be highly unlikely, and in police shootings
the suspect and his weapon are seldom stationary. Plus, the officer
himself may be moving as he shoots.
"The upper arms move more slowly than the lower arms and hands. But
shooting at the upper arms, there's a greater chance you're going to hit
the suspect's brachial artery or center mass, areas with a high
probability of fatality. Then where does shooting only to wound come in?
"Legs tend initially to move slower than arms and to maintain more
static positions. However, areas of the lower trunk and upper thigh are
rich with vascularity. A suspect who's hit there can bleed out in
seconds if one of the major arteries is severed, so again shooting just
to wound may not result in just wounding.
"On the other hand, if an officer manages to take a suspect's legs out
non-fatally, that still leaves the offender's hands free to shoot. His
ability to threaten lives hasn't necessarily been stopped."
As to preventing so-called "overkill" from shots that are fired after a
threat is neutralized, Lewinski offers these observations:
"Twenty years ago officers were trained to 'shoot then assess.' They
fired 1 or 2 rounds, then stopped to see the effect. This required 1/4
to � second, during which time the suspect could keep firing, if he
hadn't been incapacitated.
"Now they're taught to 'shoot and assess,' to judge the effect of their
shots as they continue to fire, an on-going process. This allows the
officer to continually defend himself, but because the brain is trying
to do 2 things at once--shoot and assess--a very significant change in
the offender's behavior needs to take place in order for the officer to
recognize the change of circumstances.
"A suspect falling to the ground from being shot would be a significant
change. But by analyzing the way people fall, we've determined that it
takes 2/3 of a second to a full second or more for a person to crumple
to the ground from a standing position. And that is when they've been
hit in a motor center that produces instant loss of muscle tension.
"While an officer is noticing this change, he is going to continue
firing if he is shooting as fast as he can under the stress of trying to
save his life. On average, from the time an officer perceives a change
in stimulus to the time he is able to process that and actually stop
firing, 2 to 3 additional rounds will be expended.
"Shooting beyond the moment a threat is neutralized is not a willful,
malicious action in most cases. It's an involuntary factor of human
dynamics.
"Given what science tells us about armed encounters, Sen. Paterson's
proposals are fantasies. They would hold officers to super-human
performance and punish them criminally for being unable to achieve it."
LEGAL ISSUES. A shoot-to-wound mandate would "not be valid legally"
because it sets a standard far beyond that established by Graham v.
Connor, the benchmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on police use of
force, says former prosecutor Jeff Chudwin, now chief of the Olympia
Fields (IL) PD and president of the Illinois Tactical Officers Assn.
Recognizing that violent encounters are "tense, uncertain and rapidly
evolving," the Court "does not require officers to use the least
intrusive method" of forcefully controlling a threatening suspect, but
"only what's reasonable," Chudwin explains. When an officer's life or
that of a third party appears in jeopardy, shooting can be justified as
reasonable.
By legal definition, the possible consequences of deadly force include
both death and great bodily harm. "The law has never broken these 2
apart," Chudwin says, which is what Paterson's proposal tried to do.
"He's saying that police should only shoot someone just a little bit.
Deadly force is not about 'just a little bit.' Any time you fire a
firearm, there's a substantial risk of great bodily harm or death. The
law doesn't even so much as suggest that deadly force should be just
enough to wound but with no probability of death. That's plain wrong
legally and tactically, and sends the wrong message."
Attorney Bill Everett, a risk-management executive, use-of-force
instructor, former LEO, and National Advisory Board member of the FSRC,
agrees. As he explains it, use of force from a legal standpoint is a
matter of "proportionality," and there are 2 ways to measure it: what's
necessary and what's reasonable.
He draws the analogy of a house being on fire. "Firefighters can pour
what seems at the time to be about the right amount of water on it to
stop the fire versus not using one drop more of water than necessary,
even in hindsight, to put the fire out." The former fits the
"reasonable" approach, the later is the "necessary" perspective and is
the essence of Paterson's shoot-to-wound/minimal force bill.
"When you impose a standard of strict necessity, you require officers to
do a whole lot of thinking in a situation where the Supreme Court
recognizes there's not a whole lot of time to think in," Everett
declares. Under a shoot-to-wound directive, "an officer faced with a
suspect running at him with a jagged bottle is expected to think about
getting target acquisition on an arm or a leg, while his own life is at
risk." The hesitation it is likely to create will only heighten his risk.
The critical issue of officer survival aside, Everett predicts that
legislation like Paterson proposed would "substantially expand the civil
and criminal liability of police officers." He asks, "What if an officer
tries to wing a suspect and ends up hitting an innocent bystander? What
about the liability there? What if an officer tries to shoot an
offender's limb but shoots him in the chest instead? How does his true
intent get judged?
"Right now under the Supreme Court's prevailing standard lawyers and
judges in a large percentage of police shootings can look at the facts
and conclude that there is no basis for allowing a civil suit to go to
trial. But if you change the standard, there'll be a lot more cases
going to juries to evaluate: 1) did the officer intend to wound or did
he intend to kill the suspect and 2) was the suspect's death absolutely
necessary. A trial will become the rule rather than the exception.
"Who in their right mind would become a police officer in a jurisdiction
where shoot-to- wound and standards of strict necessity became the law?
Those ideas may have some humanitarian appeal, but once you go beyond
the Disneyish attraction and face the reality, support for this thinking
has to evaporate."
TACTICAL ISSUES. Modern training teaches that when an officer uses
deadly force the intent should be to stop the suspect's threatening
behavior as fast as possible.
Like it or not, this is most reliably done by "disrupting the central
nervous system, by inducing severe hemorrhaging and/or by destroying
skeletal integrity" (bone structure), in the words of firearms trainer
Ron Avery, himself a championship shooter, head of the Practical
Shooting Academy and a member of FSRC's Technical Advisory Board.
Shooting for an assailant's center mass is usually considered the most
effective first option because the upper torso combines a concentration
of vital areas and major blood vessels within the body's largest target.
"When the risk of failure is death, an officer needs the highest
percentage chance of success he can get," Everett notes.
Shooting instead for a smaller, faster-moving arm or a leg with the
intent to wound rather than to incapacitate invites a myriad of tactical
dilemmas.
For instance:
--An officer's survival instinct may exert an overpowering influence on
target selection. "I don't care how good a shot you are," says Avery,
"if your life is threatened you're going to go for the surer thing first
and worry about your assailant's life being saved second. If a guy is
running at me with a blade, the last thing I'm going to be thinking is
'I'm going to shoot him in the arm.'" Hence, shooting for center mass
may become a
psychological default.
--Poor shot placement is bound to increase. Even when officers are
trying to shoot center mass, they often miss. Lewinski recalls a case he
was involved in where an officer firing under high stress just 5 feet
from an offender failed to hit him at all with the first 5 rounds and
connected with the next 4 only because the suspect moved into his line
of fire. "Hitting an arm or a leg on a moving suspect with surgical
precision will be virtually impossible," Avery asserts. "I could
probably count on 1 hand the individuals who can make that kind of shot
under the pressure of their life on the line. Expecting that level of
performance by police officers on an agency-wide basis is ludicrous."
Misses may well go on to injure or kill someone else.
--Use of certain weapons might be discouraged. "Because of the spread
pattern, an officer might be precluded from grabbing a shotgun, for fear
of hitting more vital areas when he tries to shoot to wound," Everett
speculates. "If the offender has a fully automatic weapon, say, should
an officer be prevented from using the best defensive weapon he may have
because it might have sweep or rise?"
--"Successful" shots could be dangerous to people besides the suspect
because of through-and-through penetration. "Virtually every police
round today is designed to penetrate heavy clothing and 10 to 12 inches
of ballistic gel," explains Chudwin. "Rounds with that capability will
penetrate even the biggest arms" and could, like misses, then travel on
to hit unintended targets in the background.
--"Successful" shots that don't persuade an offender to quit leave the
officer still in peril. When we know from street experience that even
multiple center-mass hits don't always stop determined, deranged or
drugged attackers, "how many officers would be murdered by offenders who
get shot in a limb and are still fully capable of shooting back?"
Chudwin asks. Indeed, Avery believes that shooting an offender without
incapacitating him "may just infuriate him, so he doubles his effort to
kill you. There is no dependable correlation between wounding someone
and making them stop."
--Shooting to wound reflects a misapplication of police equipment.
"Less-lethal options should be attempted only with tools designed for
that purpose," Avery says. "If you deliberately use deadly force to
bring people into custody without incapacitating them, you're using the
wrong tool for that job. Also if you shoot them in the arm or leg and
you destroy muscle tissue, shatter bone or destroy nerve function you
have maimed that person for life. Now attorneys can play the argument of
'cruel and unusual punishment' and pursue punitive damages for
destroying the capacity of your 'victim' to earn wages and so on. You
don't try to just wound people with a gun. Period."
The experts we consulted agreed that advocates who push a shoot-to-wound
agenda appear to understand little about human dynamics, ballistics,
tactics, force legalities or the challenges officers face on the street.
Chudwin has found that these critics of police practices can often be
enlightened if they are invited to experience force decision-making
scenarios on a firearms simulator.
Avery has a more dramatic, if fanciful, idea. "Put them in a cage with a
lion," he suggests. "Then let's see if they shoot to wound."
II. ADVANCED INSTRUCTOR SEMINAR OFFERS LATEST ON USE-OF-FORCE ISSUES
Trainers, investigators and administrators seeking up-to-the-minute
information on major use-of-force issues should be aware of an upcoming
seminar on the subject, co-instructed by Tom Aveni, a member of FSRC's
Technical Advisory Board.
The unique 5-day, 32-hour program, "Advanced Force & Control Instructor
Seminar," will be presented Mar. 27-31 at the Tempe (AZ) PD and hosted
by Sgt. Craig Stapp, also a Force Science board member. It will be
repeated May 8-12 in Houston, TX.
Ten per cent of your course tuition will be donated to FSRC's research
projects if you mention the Force Science Research Center when
enrolling, says Aveni, a prominent force trainer and expert witness.
Aveni is affiliated with the Police Policy Studies Council, as is his
co-instructor, Steven Ashley.
The course's intensive instructional content includes: risk management
techniques for pursuits, defensible use-of-force report writing and
documentation, identifying problems with officer hit ratios,
understanding and overcoming mistaken use of deadly force and
bunch-shooting, successful tactics for low-light conditions, developing
skills for basic legal research, an update on federal case law, elements
of a proper force policy and training assessment, management of risk in
various force disciplines
and much more. Tuition is $650.
For registration or for more information, go to www.theppsc.org or phone
877-COP- PPSC.
================
(c) 2006: Force Science Research Center, www.forcescience.org. Reprints
allowed by request. For reprint clearance, please e-mail:
[email protected]. FORCE SCIENCE is a registered trademark of
The Force Science Research Center, a non-profit organization based at
Minnesota State University, Mankato.
================
---
From John Farnam:
19 Mar 06
On steel-case ammunition, from a friend and colleague in SA:
"No doubt that steel-case ammo is hard on guns, particularly Western
guns. Trouble is, here in SA, there is nothing else available. The
price difference, between Russian, steel-case and fancy FMJ (brass)
ammunition from the USA is significant. American ammunition is four
times the price of Russian ammunition!
I carry a G17, and my wife, a G19. Both these pistols have fired in
excess of 30,000 steel-case rounds each. Nothing has broken on either
thus far, and, even then, replacing a broken extractor on a Glock takes
two minutes. Conversely, the penalty for failing to train, because of a
lack of ammunition, is much stiffer!
At our Academy, we have numerous Kalashnikov variants (mostly Rs). They
have consumed over 150,000 rounds, each, of steel-case ammunition. Not
one has ever broken anything! In addition, we have two FALs. We broke
an extractor on one at 8,000 rounds. The extractor was quickly
replaced, and it has run fine ever since. Our only American rifles are
a Colt AR-15 and Ruger Mini-14. The Ruger does fine with steel-case
ammo. I've lost count of the number of broken extractors we've replaced
on the Colt!
As you know, after forcibly installing a government consisting of
blithering idiots and criminals, the USA has subsequently abandoned SA.
As a result, this country is not for sissies! This place is hard on
people and gear. Personal safety and survival is not just light
conversation when you live here!
Count your blessings in America. Your choices of gear are huge; and
tonight you can relax as you watch TV, have a burger, and drink a Dr
Pepper, all in peace and relative safety. Over here, we sleep lightly,
and 'bumps in the night' are frequent and pernicious."
Comment: Happily, this kind of insecurity has not reached our shores...
yet!
/John
21 May 06
Sage comments on steel-case ammunition, from my friend and colleague,
Alex Robinson of Robinson Arms:
"My orientation on steel cases is this: EVERY RIFLE AND PISTOL CURRENTLY
MANUFACTURED SHOULD BE DESIGNED TO MAKE USE OF IT, TO THE COMPLETE
EXCLUSION OF BRASS-CASE AMMUNITION. As the world situation heats up,
demand for small-arms ammunition will continue to increase, and
dwindling copper availability will drive a trend toward steel-case
ammunition, even in Western countries, even in the USA! As is the
present case with your South African friends, we may all be forced to
use steel-case ammunition, simply because nothing else will be available.
We've been doing our final testing on the XCR, using Wolf, steel-case
ammunition, because there are lots of our customers who, even now, want
to shoot it. As I said, before long, we may all shoot it, because we
have to. Accordingly, serious rifles and pistols should be designed
with extractors that can function with steel-case ammunition and not
break. Our XCR is so designed and will be every bit as reliable in
this regard as is the Kalashnikov."
Comment: I'll have a copy of the Robinson Arm's XCR shortly for testing,
and I'm going to feed it a lot of Wolf ammunition. At this historical
juncture, I don't want to own wimpy gear!
/John
21 Mar 06
On skill retention, from a student:
"Went to the range this weekend to see how my unused (fourteen months)
shooting and gun-handling skills have fared during dormancy. No target
practice or warm-up. Started right in with picking pistol up from
shelf, acquiring grip, and placing shots on target with serious ammo.
Interestingly, my stance and grip remain innate, instant and natural
with each pistol. No fumbling. Annoyingly, all early shots low and
left; the same push-on-trigger-pull anticipation you guys tried to drill
out of me years ago. After settling down for a few minutes, that was
corrected.
Some initial trouble remembering catching the link for multiple shots.
That, too, came back quickly upon recognition but, like the anticipatory
push, required conscious recollection and deliberate application.
As you say, most skills come back within thirty minutes. The trouble is
getting into a gunfight on the way to the range!"
Comment: The foregoing is typical. Base skills stay intact the longest,
but details start to fade almost immediately. I would rather my
students shoot twenty rounds, once every month, than shoot five-hundred
rounds, once per year. Gun owners and particularly gun carriers has a
societal responsibility to keep their skills up to par. None of us will
have the opportunity to "get ready" for an emergency!
/John
(I believe that "catching the link" means letting the trigger go forward
no farther than the point at which the sear is reset. If so, most of us
call it "resetting the trigger.")
25 Mar 06
I handled a Springfield Armory XD45 yesterday. The retailer where I saw
it indicated that it was selling well. In profile, it is the same size
as a Commander (except for the length of the grip). They've cleverly
managed to make the grip significantly slimmer than is the case with the
G21, but, in order to accommodate all those 45ACP rounds, the grip is
long! Such a long grip will develop into an issue for those wanting to
carry it concealed. With that in mind, I suspect a "Compact" version
will make its debut before long.
With the Pentagon now returning to the 45ACP pistol cartridge, after a
brief and disappointing flirtation with the 9x19, all pistols chambered
for 45ACP caliber will garner renewed interest from both the American
buying public and the American Police Community, regardless of which
particular pattern the Pentagon ultimately selects.
The Big Two in the American police handgun market are still Glock and
SIG/DAK, and rightfully so. I don't see that changing significantly in
the next few years. However, we may well see S&W's M&P grab the number
three spot away from the two current contenders, H&K's P2000 and
Beretta's PX4/C, and SA's XD series, when they develop a competent
maintenance network (like Glock's), might well ascend to that position too.
Right now, the XD series has yet to gain legitimate market acceptance as
"main-stream" pistols, but, with SA's aggressive and skillful marketing,
that is slowly changing. We've had many XD's in courses. We've seen a
few break, but, in all fairness, the pistol gets good marks.
/John
--
Stephen P. Wenger
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
http://www.spw-duf.info
