Pencil Rainishness

I currently live in DeKalb County, GA (pronounced: Duh-Cab Cownty, Jor-juh). As of this past Monday night 12 people have been killed by the DeKalb County police this year - 11 fatally shot and 1 after being terminally subdued with pepper spray and a baton. In addition, during one of the aforementioned shootouts DCPD Officer Dennis Stepnowski was also shot and killed.
Now I obviously haven't been at any of these calls, nor have I ever taken on the task of subduing an armed person. And to be fair, apparently nine of the 12 killed had guns, 1 was brandishing a machete, 1 was attempting to take an officer's gun, and the other made an "offensive" motion in dim light causing officers to believe he was armed (from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article published on Wednesday, 11/15). So I'm not going to begin to speculate on whether these decisions were justifiable. Instead I'll offer a few quotes from an ajc article published on Monday, 11/13*.

Teddy Lee Johnson, who fled the scene of a domestic incident at which officers were present, was shot 14 times following a chase on I-20.

"If you have to shoot, don't shoot to kill," Johnson said. "Fire at the abdomen. Don't shoot until your weapon is empty."

DeKalb County police policy, like many use-of-force policies around the country, calls for shooting at a suspect's "center mass" to minimize danger to bystanders and "for maximum stopping effectiveness" against the suspect.

Holy crap! I don't care what the policy states, if you've got to put 14 bullets into somebody then whatever you're doing is about as far from "maximum stopping effectiveness" as you can get! The article finishes with a reference to DeKalb's Chief Executive Officer Vernon Jones and Interim Police Chief Nick Marinelli.

The Journal-Constitution reported this month that the DeKalb department often imposed little or no disciplinary action and did not adjust its training to address patterns of policy violations in police shootings from 2001 through 2005.

The internal review board repeatedly found officers had improperly shot into moving vehicles, confronted suspects without adequate backup and neglected safety procedures for handling suspects in custody.

Marinelli and Jones again said Monday that an outside consultant found DeKalb's force policies meet national standards and that training programs are being changed to implement the consultant's recommendations to emphasize "de-escalation" techniques along with lethal force.

Changing training to emphasize de-escalation techniques? You mean shooting someone 14 times isn't a viable way to defuse a potential situation? What about shouting and throwing lit road flares, is that cool?

While this is all well and good, anyone who has ever tried to change human behavior patterns before will understand that it's going to take some serious time and effort before the Barker Bill-esque salvo settles down. So in the mean time it seems to me like mayhaps the most prudent action for Chief Nicky would be to consider passing out some bean-bag guns or something.

- - -
* It should be noted that the ajc is psychotically anal about logging in to read archived material, so I'll just post the article titles and let you do the legwork if you want it that badly.
11/13 - DeKalb brass meet with families in police shootings
11/15 - Jones: Put your weapons down

rock.
m$