Citing the dangers of ‘shooting to wound’ and a lack of clear policy around Tasers and other tools, experts say police gauge how much force to use

US police should shoot to kill or not at all, law and justice experts say

In the wake of a second fatal police shooting in the St Louis area after the death of Michael Brown, concerned citizens are asking why officers had to kill Kajieme Powell, a 25-year-old man who was holding a knife and “behaving erratically.”

They want to know why officers don’t shoot someone like Powell in the leg or the arm, rather than aiming for vital organs, or why they don’t just use a less lethal weapon, like a Taser.

Experts say “shooting to wound” only works in movies. In reality, it doesn’t make sense legally or tactically. And, they say, less-lethal force isn’t always appropriate in certain circumstances, especially when a suspect is wielding a weapon at a close range. Here’s why.

Why not shoot for the arm or leg?

Police officers in the US are trained to shoot to kill, not incapacitate.

Shooting a suspect in the arm or the leg would be difficult for John Wayne, never mind the most skilled marksman on the force, said Candace McCoy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York.

If a police officer decides to fire, and is justified in doing so, they will be shooting under intense pressure at a dangerous suspect who is likely moving quickly, all of which makes it incredibly difficult to hit a target, McCoy said. Officers are trained to shoot at “center mass”, roughly the chest region, because they’re more likely to hit the target and stop an imminent threat.

McCoy said the legal threshold for using deadly force is high: an officer can only shoot at a suspect who poses a life-threatening risk to the officer or the public. She said allowing officers to “shoot to wound” would lower that threshold.

“As a policy, [shoot to wound] is a really bad idea because it would give the police permission to take that gun out of the holster under any circumstance,” she said. A shoot to wound policy could lead to more unintentional police killings by expanding the range of circumstances in which an officer would be allowed to use his or her weapon.



Lawmakers have in the past attempted to introduce so called “minimum force” measures that would require officers to shoot a dangerous suspect in the arm or leg. Such legislation is strongly opposed by law enforcement groups.

Why not use Tasers instead of guns?

It’s a surprisingly simple answer: as David Klinger, an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri–St Louis and a former officer with the Los Angeles police department, says, “Officers aren’t required to risk their lives unnecessarily.”

Officers are trained to use deadly force on suspects wielding weapons, Klinger said. He added that if an officer is confident enough, he or she can try to incapacitate the suspect with a less-than-lethal device, but if that fails, the officer would have to use a gun anyway, and by then it could be too late to stop them, and their own lives – or the lives of other civilians – would be at risk.

Based on video of the Powell shooting released by St Louis police, Klinger said Powell left the two officers with no choice but shoot because he advanced at them brandishing a knife.



“It’s tragic and its unfortunate, but the suspect here in this situation drove the encounter,” Klinger said. “He really didn’t give the officers many options.”



Police do have options in other situations. Uniformed officers typically carry at least one less-lethal option in their duty belts, including, among other things, batons, pepper spray, Tasers or rubber bullets, Klinger said.

William Terrill, a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, said there is a continuum that dictates use of force by police officers. He said the amount of force officers use should be proportional to the threat posed. The spectrum scales from using verbal force to firing a gun.



While US law is clear on when deadly force can be used, Terrill said it’s very difficult to legislate the use of less-lethal force.

“The law simply says, the force has to be objectively reasonable,” he said. “What does that mean, objectively reasonable? That’s very hard for an individual officer to figure out.”



As US police departments increasingly adopt less-than-lethal devices, Terrill said there needs to be a more standardized approach to training officers to use them.



Given the gap in the law, it comes down to departments to regulate the use of less-lethal force, and that leads to some major disparities.

“We’re kind of the wild west when it comes to less-lethal force policy,” he said.

