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Cleveland police routinely hit people in the head with guns, the U.S. Department of Justice found.

(David Petkiewicz, Northeast Ohio Media Group)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland police officers routinely hit people in the head with their pistols, a deadly force and dangerous practice that should rarely be permitted, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

In some cases guns have accidentally fired when Cleveland police officers struck suspects.

The revelation was part of a 58-page report released Thursday, the culmination of a 21-month investigation into the Cleveland Police Department's use of force. Over and over, the report found the department violated the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in its policing practices.

Cleveland police officers often approach suspects with their guns drawn at inappropriate times, the report says. That approach increases the possibility of escalating violence and limits non-lethal options officers can use.

The approach also leaves officers with only one free hand, limiting less-lethal options to restrain a suspect and increasing the chance that a suspect could grab the gun.

Cleveland police reports even include a box for officers to check when they hit someone on the head with a gun.

Using a firearm as a bludgeoning weapon and hitting suspects on the head with hard objects are not accepted practices in U.S. law enforcement, according to law enforcement experts interviewed by Northeast Ohio Media Group.

"In extreme circumstances that's what you're going to do, but it is generally not an acceptable practice," said Robert Pusins, Executive Director for the Broward County Sheriff's Office in Florida. "It's a training issue, but it's also a policy issue. Anytime law enforcement is using force it must be reasonable under the circumstances."

The report details several instances in which Cleveland police officers unnecessarily hit people on the head with pistols.

Off-duty cop bashes suspect who thought he was being robbed

The Justice Department report pointed to a specific encounter in 2012, where an off-duty officer approached a car of six people he thought were selling drugs.

The officer approached the car and asked the driver to leave the scene. When the driver got out of the car and asked the officer to show identification, the officer drew his gun.

A witness told the Justice Department that the when the driver asked the officer to see his badge, the officer refused. The officer eventually started wrestling with the driver and struck him in the head, causing the gun to fire.

The driver ran away from the scene, face bleeding. The officer later said he did not know whether the bullet hit the driver.

The Justice Department's report says this is not acceptable.

"An officer's use of deadly force is not justified where a suspect physically resists arrest but poses no imminent danger of serious physical harm to the officer or another," the Justice Department wrote in the report.

In order for a gun to fire, a police officer would almost certainly have to have his finger on the trigger, said Dave Dobransky, owner of Dobransky Firearms in North Canton, which sells firearms to law enforcement agencies in Northeast Ohio.

Law enforcement weapons Dobransky sells come with multiple safeties, inducing one that prevents the gun from firing unless someone puts a finger on the trigger.

"If somebody is holding or bludgeoning someone with it and they inadvertently put the finger on the trigger or something to this nature, yes the gun can go off," Dobransky said. "Is this a safe thing to do, no."

Man steals wine and beer, whacked with officer's gun

In 2011, a police officer working a private security detail at a convenience store used his gun to hit a man who had shoplifted a bottle of wine and a can of beer. The man ran when the police officer ordered him to stop.

The officer pursued the man with his gun drawn, even though he knew the man wasn't armed.

After the man yelled "Shoot me!" several times, the officer struck him in the left side of his head with his handgun. The resulting gash required four staples to close.

"Again, this use of deadly force against a man who was not armed, had committed a minor offense, and who presented only a minimal threat to the officer was unreasonable and dangerous," the Justice Department found.

Police report pistol-hitting incidents as "less-lethal" force

Cleveland police department's own policies are confusing to officers who are left with unclear direction about what tactics they are supposed to use under specific circumstances, the report says.

Cleveland police reports include a box for "hitting someone on the head with a firearm," listed under a category of "less than lethal force." This contradicts the Department of Justice report and Cleveland Police Department's own policies, which classify "head strikes with any hard object" as deadly force.

"It is also unclear why CDP appears to be categorizing hitting someone with a gun as a conventional response when force is needed," the report says. "This is uniformly understood to be a dangerous practice that should never be permitted except in very unusual and exigent circumstances in which the use of deadly force is authorized; yet, it was a practice we saw CDP officers engaging in too frequently."

Chuck Drago, former chief of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department and now a legal expert on use of force issues, said that as a practice, hitting a suspect on the head is widely prohibited across the United States.

"It sounds like it is accepted within the (Cleveland) department and they need to change it immediately because it is absolutely not normal," Drago said. "I have never been anywhere (in the country) where they would recognize striking someone with a gun as a use of force tactic."