How police are trained in deadly force

When should a police officer use deadly force?

That’s the question at the center of the controversy over the shooting death of a teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., which sparked nearly two weeks of unrest.

Michael Brown, 18, was unarmed when he was shot to death by Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson in the St. Louis suburb Aug. 9.

Police said Brown assaulted Wilson. Yet by some accounts, the teen had his hands up and was surrendering when he was shot. Others have said Brown rushed the officer.

Exactly what happened is not exactly clear.

What’s not ambiguous are the standards needed to use deadly force, as set forth by the Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court: An officer must reasonably believe it is necessary to shoot to kill to defend him or herself or someone else from imminent death.

It’s a call made in the blink of an eye, in tense and uncertain circumstances, sometimes limited by distance, distractions or darkness. And it brings to bear all of the officer’s experience, awareness and, perhaps most important, training.

“It’s probably the most critical decision an officer will ever make, and it’s also the hardest,” said Georgia attorney Lance LoRusso, a former police officer and author of the book “When Cops Kill.”

Deadly force is one of the most restricted, scrutinized and severe actions a police officer can take.

Yet the need for it could arise at any moment.

“There’s a potential with everybody I talk to that this could turn into a lethal force situation, and I have to be ready every single time,” said San Diego police Officer Ken Kries, a use-of-force expert and defensive tactics trainer at the San Diego Regional Public Safety Training Institute, the academy that trains local police officers and sheriff’s deputies.

That’s why for law enforcement officials, the underlying question is how to prepare officers for the unpredictable.

Clock vs. cop

Half a second.

According to experts, that’s how much time an officer has to pull a weapon when confronted with someone perceived as dangerous and about to inflict harm.

At the academy, current and future officers undergo extensive training in how to react to a deadly threat.

Their split-second decisions can mean the difference between their own life and death, or that of an innocent bystander.

“It happens so quick,” Kries said.

Though officers are trained to respond rapidly and appropriately, action beats reaction every time. Simply put, time is against them.

Studies show that it takes a quarter of a second for an officer to recognize a threat, such as when a person is reaching for a gun, and another quarter-second for that officer to draw his gun. It takes another .06 seconds to pull the trigger, Kries said.

“The officer is always going to react to the suspect’s threat, which will always put him behind, no matter what,” Kries said.

That’s why recruits are trained to recognize and react to a movement that looks like a gun being drawn. “They’re taught from Day One the hands are what’s going to kill you, the hands are what’s going to hurt you,” said San Diego police Officer Rich Hinzo, another use-of-force trainer at the police academy.

A lot of the training is focused on hints and cues. Officers must evaluate a person’s behavior, his body language, what he’s saying and doing, said academy supervisor and San Diego police Sgt. Ron Philhower.

Officers also learn to constantly scan their surroundings and process all that data as they approach. “They are taking in a lot of information in a short period of time and have to formulate a plan just like that,” said Kries, snapping his fingers.

Police say that ultimately, it is the suspect who dictates what happens, whether he or she follows the officer’s commands or actively resists. “If you comply with an officer’s orders, the chance of being involved in a shooting is minimal to none,” Kries said.

However, said Kries, “If I tell you, ‘Don’t move’ and you move, I would have to react at the moment or possibly be killed.”

Related: 5 examples of how police use force | Critic: Police need to minimize force

If a noncompliant person makes a quick move, the officer does not know if he is going for a phone, a knife, a replica gun or a lethal firearm.

“I don’t know a gun is fake until I hold it in my hand,” Kries said.

That was the case last year in a shooting involving a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy that left a 13-year-old boy dead. The teen was carrying an Airsoft BB gun that resembled an AK-47, authorities said. A deputy ordered him to drop the weapon, but the boy turned and pointed it toward the deputy, who responded by opening fire.

The county’s district attorney ruled that while the shooting was a tragedy, the use of lethal force was a reasonable response under the circumstances, and no charges would be brought against the deputy.

Local examples

San Diego police have been involved in eight shootings this year, including four that resulted in fatalities. One of those also involved a realistic-looking, but fake, gun. In February, a 62-year-old Vietnam veteran brandishing what appeared to be an AR-15 was shot and killed after the man pointed the gun at police officers.

The weapon turned out to be a pellet gun designed to look like the military-style, semi-automatic rifle, police said.

In a second incident, a double-shooting suspect leading authorities on a chase was fatally wounded in a barrage of bullets after he aimed a pistol at officers.

The third fatality involved a passenger in a truck who claimed to have a gun and explosives and threatened to kill the woman he was with. He had one arm around her head, the other near her rib cage and was ignoring officers’ orders when he was felled with a single shot. A search of the truck turned up no weapons. An outraged family member said officers were wrong to shoot the man, a felon who had just gotten out of jail and was supposed to check into a drug program.

The fourth fatality by San Diego police was in July. Officers were called by family members to a home where they encountered an agitated man swinging a machete and threatening to kill them. He was shot and killed after stabbing a police dog, then swinging the large knife at officers.

Criticism and questions from the public routinely follow almost all police shootings.

“What they forget is the number of times everyday in this country that officers could be lawfully authorized to use deadly force and they don’t,” said attorney LoRusso.

LoRusso said some of those cases are fatal mistakes.

“There are situations I’ve analyzed where I believe an officer has hesitated and they are no longer here.”

Fighting stress within

At the police academy, officers train for use-of-force incidents and hone their marksmanship and judgment with a $180,000, room-sized, video-game-like computer system called a force option simulator.

The virtual firearms training device, which replicates situations officers face in real life, allows instructors to change the course of a variety of scenarios — from routine to risky to suddenly life-threatening — depending on how an officer reacts.

In one scenario, officers face a gunman who’s shot two people at a clinic. In one run-through, the suspect is shot and killed. In another, however, the gunman is not felled right away, runs into another room, takes cover and starts firing at officers.

In a third, trainees confront a young man holding students in a library at knife point. (Make the wrong decision, he kills a student.) In yet another, a drunk yells that he has a gun and then points at officers — with his finger. The tests teach officers how to understand and manage the way their bodies react when faced with a life-or-death situation.

Such stress, even in such a simulation, triggers an involuntary physiological response of increased heart rate, a temporary loss of hearing called “auditory exclusion” and the dangerous effect of tunnel vision.

“If someone was holding a gun pointed at you, your eyes focus on the gun itself and, as the stress increases, your peripheral vision is taken away essentially,” Kries said. “Your degree of field can literally narrow down to almost 3 degrees at 10 feet. It’s like looking through a straw.”

With that narrow focus, officers may not see other threats, Kries said. The simulator exercises help create a “memory databank” for officers, so they learn how to perform even while their mind and body’s survival mechanisms work against them.

“If you are unprepared for an emergency and have no trained response, it will take at least eight to 10 seconds under optimal circumstances and much longer during high stress to assess the situation and come up with a plan,” Kries said. “Training, planning and mental rehearsal can reduce the time sequence to one to two seconds.”

Law enforcers may be justified in using lethal force in response to potential weapons aside from just guns.

A person with a knife, for instance, who is less than 21 feet away from an officer, can be just as deadly as someone with a firearm. “A man can cover that distance and be on top of the officer before he gets his gun out and fires a round.” Kries said. Even if an officer does have time to fire, the person may not be incapacitated. “And now we’re having a knife fight at close range.“

Hinzo said officers most often use less lethal weapons, including batons, Tasers, pepper spray and bean bag guns. “We use those tools on a daily basis but, because there’s no shooting involved, you don’t hear about it.”

Trigger-happy?

One common criticism is that police didn’t aim to just wound a person. Another is that an officer should simply shoot a weapon out of a person’s hand.

Experienced officers will tell you such shots are fiction, unlikely bits in a Hollywood movie.

Officers are taught to shoot for the torso because it’s the largest target, and to continue to shoot until the threat is no more. Kries said there have been cases of mortally wounded suspects continuing to advance on officers.

Kries said that being involved in a shooting is horrible and frightening for officers, with repercussions that last a lifetime. “If you take a life, you have to live with that,” he said.

And a high percentage of officers leave the profession within five years after a shooting, even when it was justified, according to LoRusso, who added, “I’ve never met or spoken with an officer who felt good about having to use deadly force.”