This is dated 9/21/2016
HERE ARE EIGHT POLICIES THAT CAN PREVENT POLICE KILLINGS
Alice Speri
September 21 2016, 2:00 p.m.
WITH 788 PEOPLE killed by police this year alone, death at the hands of law enforcement has become so routine in this country that it risks becoming expected and predictable, as if it were inevitable. Every time a new video emerges, anger soars, as do calls to end police violence. Then invariably, within days or sometimes mere hours, police somewhere else kill again.
This week was no exception. Last night, the now familiar scene of angry protests met with tear gas unfolded again, this time in Charlotte, North Carolina, after a police officer shot and killed Keith L. Scott, a 43-year-old black father who had been sitting in his car waiting to pick up a child from school. Police said on Wednesday that Scott was holding a gun, which they said they later recovered, and that he ignored orders to drop it. Scott’s family said he had been holding a book, and his daughter speculated that police would plant evidence on the scene. The officer who killed Scott was not wearing a body camera.
Debate over such details, too, has become common, and increasingly supplemented by video evidence that has rarely made a difference in bringing about greater accountability. Just hours before Scott was killed, police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, released footage showing another black man, Terence Crutcher, being shot to death by a police officer while he walked away, unarmed, and with his hands up. A week earlier, Tyre King, a 13-year-old with a BB gun who was reportedly running away from police, was killed by a Columbus, Ohio, police officer who had killed someone else in 2012.
....
As police regulations vary widely between departments, researchers examined the policies of 91 of the country’s 100 largest cities’ departments, looking for eight major policies regulating the use of force. They wanted to see which departments implement the following eight policies:
Require officers to de-escalate situations before resorting to force
Limit the kinds of force that can be used to respond to specific forms of resistance
Restrict chokeholds
Require officers to give verbal warning before using force
Prohibit officers from shooting at moving vehicles
Require officers to exhaust all alternatives to deadly force
Require officers to stop colleagues from exercising excessive force
Require comprehensive reporting on use of force
Not a single department was found to implement all eight policies.
http://theintercept.com/2016/09/21/here-are-eight-policies-that-can-prevent-police-killings/
DO SOMETHING!
| 