From the beginning of this blog, I’ve made one entry at a time.  A confluence of scheduling circumstances in coming days demands that if I’m going to get the whole promised series on the PERF recommendations for new police use of force guidelines presented here in a timely manner, I have to dump them all at once.

You will find them immediately below.

Have at it, folks.  Your comments are welcome.

And, please, read the comments from other viewers. In my “day jobs,” I’ve found truth in the old lawyers’ saying that “In the Halls of Justice, most of the justice is in the halls.”  I’ve likewise found that in the halls of training, much of the training is in the halls.  I’ve been to courses where I learned more from the other students than from the designated instructors.

Similarly, in the “bogs of blogs” some of the best learning and discussion points are found in the reader commentary.

Do not lose sight of the fact that if unrealistic expectations are morphed into police use of force standards, we can expect the same unrealistic demands to be made on armed citizens protecting themselves and their loved ones.

Oh, and did I mention that all opinions I’ve expressed here are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the policies of any organization, agency, or entity I have served with past or present?

20 COMMENTS

  1. My college years, including graduate school, were 1965 to 1974. PERF, as well as the silliness currently occurring at a number of universities, reminds me of the hippy, flower-power, make-love-not-war bullshit from those days. I don’t know whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about the future. An argument for optimism is that we survived that period. An argument for pessimism is that, back then, the country was run by people who had gone through the Depression and World War Two whereas, today, it is being run by the hippy generation.

    There’s nothing new in the Critical Decision-Making Model. It’s just OODA by a different name. I do agree that people, whether police or private citizens, should spend as much time as possible on OO before proceeding to DA. A police officer who responds to a shooting needs to leave room for the possibility that the guy holding the smoking gun is the victim and the bullet-riddled corpse at his feet is the criminal. I just finished a class on use of force taught by a lawyer associated with ACLDN. Several of the cases he covered had a common thread. People were shot incorrectly, but not necessarily illegally, because the shooter jumped to an erroneous conclusion, made on the basis of suspicious behavior but less than conclusive proof, and misinterpreted subsequent behavior as reinforcing the initial conclusion. I don’t know if it’s possible to devise a uniform approach that covers both a harmless, innocent person and a cop killer.

    The idea that police officers should be trained as psychologists or have time to call in mental health professionals is ludicrous. The real solution is to expand mental health facilities so that the mentally ill get treatment before their misbehavior brings in the police. A good place to start would be the Cook County, Illinois jail where 25% to 30% of the inmates are there because of crimes stemming from their mental problems. The warden has commented that the same people who objected to committing the mentally ill to hospitals are satisfied with incarcerating them in his jail.

    I agree that limitations on police will spill over onto private citizens. New York City mayor De Blasio has already started this by decriminalizing quality-of-life misbehavior like public urination. If a homeowner calls the police to complain about someone urinating on his property, I can see the police replying, “We can’t do anything. It’s no longer illegal. And if you do anything, we’ll have to arrest you.” The result will be to expand the ghetto. I can see two possible reactions to this. One would be a backlash that elects hard-core, tough-on-crime politicians without the patience to avoid injustice. The other would be to replace patriotism with apathy. Ambitious, responsible people would begin to wonder how much they owed a country that refuses to protect them or allow them to protect themselves.

  2. I’ve followed Ayoob’s books and blog for a while. I agree with most of what he says.

    Has Mas ever addressed “Rise of the Warrior Cop” by Balko? Apparently, police in this country have been going about (mostly indiscriminately) kicking in peoples’ doors, shooting their dogs, and running over their homes with tanks. Cops promote a macho warrior image (hey, it’s cooler than cutting parking tickets all day) and recruit macho warrior wannabes. Read the book for the details. Or any number of websites on the issue. Or watch the youtube videos of cops dressed like occupying shock troopers in full combat gear riding around in their armored personnel carriers (and tanks).

    Right here, on Backwoods Home:
    http://www.backwoodshome.com/the-militarization-of-americas-police-forces/
    (Conspicuously unaddressed on this blog.)

    Did anyone believe that the “Warrior Cop” syndrome wouldn’t have consequences?

  3. I am repeating my previous comments, below, in the interests of making LEOs aware of the importance of being represented by a Good Attorney, who can convert their version of a Deadly Force incident into the legal semantics that The Courts, Prosecutors, IA Investigators, Attorney’s for the Crook, or their Family (If Any), need to hear, in order to be pacified, and assured the Officer Acted in a manner approved by all Laws, Rules, Regulations, and Policies, so the Officer/Agent will be represented by the Government’s Attorney’s in any legal actions brought against him/her as the result of the Deadly Force Incident the Officer/Agent was involved in!

    I was a Course Developer/Instructor at the US Customs Service Academy when it opened at the Car Barn, in Georgetown, in 1974, and remained there almost until it merged with the Training Facility in Glynco, GA, in 1979.

    A surprising number of our Customs Patrol Officer students, many of whom were Ex-Customs Port Investigators, or Ex-Customs Sky Marshals (Both of which jobs had been Terminated), had been involved in previous incidents which lead to them being brought into Court on charges, real, and fictitious, where they were denied Government representation, either entirely, or until so late that the CPO already had their own lawyer, so turned down Government representation.

    Anyway, only those CPOs who retained Good Lawyers, were still employed by Customs, when all was said, done legally!! So, as they say, “A defendant who represents themselves, has a Fool for a Client”!!

    Although still with Customs afterwards, it would probably have been a long time before they could expect a promotion, so I sincerely hope those students were smart enough to consider “moving on” to a different Government Agency, at the earliest opportunity?

    Paul Edwards Says:
    March 22nd, 2016

    Assuming the Officer survives the incident alive, it will become his/her job to say as little about the incident, as possible, until they can have a GOOD Lawyer by their side to advise them. making sure their statements, or Testimony, words are consistent as possible with all physical evidence, as possible, while making it appear that the Officer performed in accordance with all the Agency’s Laws, Rules, Regulations, Policies, and Written Guidelines.

    A job that only a GOOD Lawyer will be able to tell the Officer how to Accomplish properly, in the face of the Agency, or IA’s Negative, Hostile, questioning!!

  4. In cases involving legitimate use of force, a “good” lawyer is one experienced in defending innocent, rather than guilty, defendants. The difference is important. When defending the guilty, a shrewd lawyer wants to give the prosecution as little evidence as possible to use against his client. An innocent defendant needs to get the truth out in the open so that he is exonerated. The Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network will find a suitable lawyer for a member and will help with the costs of his defense.

  5. I’ve written and discarded several comments to this series. That’s in large part because my interest in the PERF report and guidelines is less about those guidelines in specific than it is about what they portend. Tonight, I came onto the following editorial, “Police officers should help write, not shun, new use-of-force standards” from the LA Times which pretty much wraps up how I feel about the PERF report and guidelines:

    http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-police-standard-20160216-story.html

    Since law enforcement agencies are part of government, it is ultimately the public, not the cops, who have the right to determine the standards by which cops are to do their job. (Individuals then have, of course, the right to then decide whether or not they want to continue in, or engage in, that job.) It’s been said that the PERF guidelines are “ivory tower” ideas passed by a bunch of top executives who are more politicians than cops. That evaluation of the top cops may or may not be accurate, but even if it is accurate it’s not an inappropriate action since the executives at the top are the individuals appointed by the public to oversee training and setting of standards. There can be no doubt that they should certainly do that in consultation with the trainers and the rank and file and take into consideration officer opinion and safety, but at the end of the day the top cops must exercise independent judgment and also either bow to the will of the public or bow out.

    I’m not saying that the will of the public is necessarily reflected in the PERF guidelines or, indeed, that the will of the public is necessarily clearly defined on the use of force issue at all. The winds of change, however, seem to be pretty clearly blowing in that direction (as indicated _by_ the issuance of the PERF report and guidelines). The rank and file may still have the opportunity to negotiate something that they can generally live with but which will go some way to heading off those winds, but which will also satisfy to some extent those elements of the public causing the winds to blow. But right now, by just saying no, all that they are doing is allowing those standards to be imposed on them from on high.

  6. The trouble is, Dave, PERF published its guidelines WITHOUT reaching out to the broader pool of police leaders, OR to the subject matter experts within LE. That’s why IACP, which encompasses vastly more chiefs than PERF, joined FOP in the unprecedented act of together questioning the PERF guidelines.

  7. It’s actually not entirely accurate that PERF didn’t hear from the “on the ground” cops. From:

    http://www.policeforum.org/how-perf-s-use-of-force-guiding-principles-were-developed

    “Most recently, PERF held two conferences of police officials to develop the 30 Guiding Principles that were released at the January 29 meeting. On December 17, 2015, a group of officers, sergeants, and lieutenants from agencies that had been involved in the Scotland field work or had expressed interest in this work came Washington to discuss the issues that had emerged over the last year or more. And on January 12-13, PERF held a second meeting of more than 100 police officials from all ranks, from officers to chiefs, to review a draft of the guidelines.”

    As a side question: Is it common for chiefs of police and other top police executives to be able to move into those positions with absolutely no experience or training as a street cop, sergeant, or lieutenant? I pulled several individual US attendees out of the PERF report and for the ones who had online bios all seemed to have experience at that level, along with extensive training. I find it difficult to accept that virtually everyone involved in the PERF report and guidelines had absolutely no idea of what they were doing vs what the objectors to the guidelines are claiming are the realities and real stakes on the street. And if they did have that knowledge, why would they need to consult further?

  8. Dave, did it say what agencies those officers were from? Scottish or US?

    While the usual career path is patrol officer and up, you do have X number who for whatever reason rose more on the paperwork side of the job than the street side. Also, some very good chiefs have been on the admin side for so long that they may not have kept up with advances in training on the street side.

  9. Dave:
    you seem to be unaware of the normal route to positions of power in the various types of Law Enforcement. Above a certain level, one only continues to rise in rank due almost entirely to internal politics, and to reach the top levels one must also add in external politics. Do you have an understanding of “office politics”? Have you ever worked at a company/business that had more than 50 employees? Did the people who worked in management seem the same type as everyone else? Ever wonder why almost no one rose from low level to upper management? Even if they wanted to? Did they seem to think about, or do, things the same as everyone else in the company? Puzzled by what seemed to everyone else to be odd or stupid decisions made by them?

    Police chiefs and their ilk are not the same as you and me. They mostly get to those positions because they think differently. Trust them? Oh, hell no! When they open their mouths and spew stuff like this PERF, you have to expect a lot of it will be the equivalent of what comes out of the south end of a north facing bovine. In addition, anything originating from (the formerly) Great Britain must be viewed with great caution, as those people have lost their minds when it comes to police type environments/law enforcement, since they have made self-defense illegal. No, that is not a mistake. On paper the right to defend yourself and family may exist, but in reality, it’s long gone.

  10. Mas, I only looked at ones from police departments or sheriffs offices in the US. I looked at 7 or 8 at random and 5 had online bios. It could, of course, merely been luck of the draw.

  11. @Will: Where did I say anything one way or the other about trusting them?

  12. Never having been in law enforcement and being generally unfamiliar with the details of officer guidelines. I took Mas’s suggestion and read the PERF guidelines first and then read all six posts in one sitting and only read the comments after the sixth post.

    As an outsider my knee jerk reaction and 2 cents:

    1 This is basically a CYA / deniability for senior police officials and their elected politicians they report to.

    2 The line officers are being set up to take the fall if there is negative media and or activist protest to an officer involved shooting.

    3 The majority of these PC guidelines would never see the light of day if the people proposing them had to personally field test and adhere to them for a year out in the real world.

    I would predict they would be employing their weapon at 21 feet plus a cushion, not psycho babble and a close up group hug. Assuming a slow bad guy, 3 seconds is plenty of time for them to demonstrate evasion, finding cover, getting a shrink’s consultation, a supervisor’s evaluation of your situational options and additional backup officers to arrive and make sure doing things by the PERF.

    4 Unfortunately, PC politics and CYA seems to prevail and real word realities, time frames and common sense seems mostly absent from consideration.

  14. Z, reading between the lines, it sounds as if the private company was threatening “the usual suspects” in ways the police cannot.

  16. I am not a LEO so I am probably poorly qualified to pass judgment on the specifics of the PERF recommendations. However, I do think that I understand the philosophy behind these “Guiding Principles” and would like to comment on that.

    The true guiding principle behind the PERF recommendations is the left-wing worldview. As I have noted in previous blog comments, the left-wing worldview is rooted in the simplistic notion that (a) all human beings are inherently good and, therefore, (b) when humans do commit wrongs, it is because some external, environmental factor has forced them into it. In contrast, the right-wing worldview is rooted in the simplistic notion that (a) mankind is inherently flawed and evil and, therefore, (b) humans will commit wrongs automatically unless their nature is tempered by discipline and the enforcement of a strong moral code.

    The reason that politically active humans tend to be drawn to these polar opposite views is because of their simplicity. These simplistic models of human behavior lend themselves to the easy development of a consistent political philosophy. In reality, humans are rarely either purely good or evil. I envision human behavior as a scale distributed along a normal (or bell-shaped) curve. A curve whereby good and evil represent the extremes of behavior with most of humanity falling somewhere in-between. I would estimate that about 20% of humans can be classified as good with perhaps one-half of this amount (10%) being “saintly” good. By this, I mean that this slice of humanity would continue to be good even under duress. They would be good unto death.

    The flip-side is that about 20% of humanity is evil with about half of this amount (10%) being truly evil and the other 10% being evil whenever they think that they can get away with it. The main bulk of humanity (i.e. The center part of the curve) comprising the remain 60% of humanity is mostly good and tries to behave in a moral fashion but, if placed in duress or exposed to significant temptation, will slip up and do the occasion evil thing which they typically end up regretting later.

    How does all this apply to the PERF report? Simple. The writers of this report are left-wing. They assume that 100% of humanity wants to be good and have built a philosophy of police use of force that is based upon this simplistic notion.

    As an aside, left-wingers just love doing this kind of thing. They take their simplistic assumptions and then apply them to some policy area and then (bam!) they bring forth some idealistic theory and set of policies that is going to fix all the problems in that area.

    If you study history, you will see this pattern of left-wing behavior time after time after time. They applied this “people are good, it is the environment that is bad” philosophy to economics and brought forth communism. They applied it to poverty and brought forth the “social safety net”. They applied it to alcoholism and brought forth prohibition. They are busy applying it to firearms ownership and have brought forth the policy of gun control. In this case, they have applied it to police use of force and have brought forth the PERF recommendations.

    The problem with all these left-wing theories is that the simplistic foundation is wrong or, at best, is only partially correct. As noted above, humans are not purely good as assumed by the left. Therefore, polices based upon this assumption fail when they are moved from the ivory tower into the real world.

    Generally, when left-wing polices are implemented, the failure of a significant slice of humanity to follow the left-wing “script” causes unintended consequences that end up destabilizing the beautiful left-wing theory.
    For example, in theory communism will produce a class-less workers’ paradise. In practice, it removes the incentives found in capitalism and ends up generating a lack-luster economy. It also produces brutal wars that have killed millions. The social safety net was supposed to mitigate poverty. It also created a culture of dependency and destroyed the family unit. The Prohibition of Alcohol was supposed to end all of the ills associated with alcoholism. Instead, it fostered organized crime and disrespect for the law. Gun control is supposed to curb crime and “gun violence”. In fact, it destroys the concept and ability of self-defense and encourages crime by setting up the public as helpless victims.

    In theory, the PERF principles will reduce the necessity to use deadly force and offer a “kinder, gentler” style of law enforcement. In practice, it will place police officers in an untenable position by raising expectations that “de-escalation” and “proportionality” (applied properly) are magic-bullet solutions for dealing with violent people. It is true that, for the majority of the population, these will suffice. However, when dealing with that portion of humanity that is truly evil and dangerous, they will not suffice. In that event, one of two things will happen. The officer (and maybe some civilians too) will be killed when the magic-bullet does not work or (else) the officer will resort to deadly force anyway (by necessity) and stand condemned for the use of excessive force.

    Eventually, after enough officers and civilians are killed by the widespread application of PERF’s principles, the pendulum will swing back and PERF will go into the dustbin of history along with other left-wing ideals such as prohibition. The only questions will be: (a) how many good people will die to test this latest left-wing theory and (b) how big will the crime problem grow due to this “kinder, gentler” approach. In my view, it surely will grow just as soon as the truly evil people figure out that the cops are now being taught to never, never, never pull that trigger.

  17. {Mas, my e-mail address changed}

    TN_MAN,

    I really like what you wrote, and I believe it is accurate. It is especially true that kindler, gentler methods will not suffice for that incorrigible 10% on the evil side of the scale. It is a common error to believe that others view the world the same way we do. Rules that work for most of us will not work for all of us.

  18. Lots of wisdom coming down the pike in these blogs. May the PERF tail not wag the police dog. Special thanks to TN_MAN.

  19. One thing that is conspicuosly absent from PERF’s recommendations is any mention of new rules for criminals to abide by. As LEOs, our use of force actions are merely a reaction to the criminals actions. The outcome is determined and driven by the criminal. We do our best to influence and mitigate the outcome for the best, but not at the expense of innocent life. I have heard jurors openly express that they believe “it’s our job to get hurt.” Wrong! We know that we face that risk, but we are not “expendable”. We have families to go home to, just like everyone else. We hurt and we bleed. just like everyone else. We serve our communities in the interest of the citizens, acting on their behalf, as they cannot act on their own behalf.

  20. Somebody shrunk a self-contained taser into a 12 gauge case. I expect it would be easy to further shrink this to 9 mm. Why isn’t LEO championing this less-lethal alternative? Given this easily-developed alternative, how is using bullets in a pistol still justified in most situations?

    Suppose I felt entrepreneurial and decided to start manufacturing taser ammunition, for civilians to use from a quieter, more secretive handgun in situations where they were hesitant to kill. What would actually happen? The legal profession would descend on me to crush me out of business. I would be threatened by everything from bogus liability lawsuits to bans in contravention of 2A. Every one of these threats would be enforced on me by LEOs.

    The result is that civilian-favoring military innovation is banned, and the existing government/civilian military balance of power is pinned in place by LEOs. In the 100 years when travel speed increased from horses, to automobiles, to moon rockets, handguns now won’t go off if dropped and have doubled in ammunition capacity. That’s how effective gun control has been.

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