How Police Justify the Use of Deadly Force

Police shoot people while performing their occupational activities. This paper examines how police interpret, explain, and justify the use of lethal force. Formal rules governing this area of police behavior are vague, produce uncertainty, and provide only weak guidance for officers. The occupational subculture of police contains a set of shared understandings as to when, why, and against whom shooting is justified. Subcultural understandings also constitute resources upon which members may draw to explain and account for shooting incidents after the fact. Official accounts produced for outside audiences are fashioned in line with publicly acceptable and legally justified reasons for shooting. An average of 600 citizens are killed annually by police in the United States (Sherman, 1980:4). Fyfe (1981:381) estimates that in 1978 an additional 1,400 persons suffered serious injury from police shootings. The capacity to use force is the core of the police role and the unifying theme in police work (Bittner, 1970). Previous research in this area has directed relatively little attention to how police themselves view the use of lethal force against citizens. Empirical studies have attempted to measure the extent of, and provide an explanation for, the use of lethal force by police. Sherman and Langworthy (1979:553) attributed 3.6 percent of all homicides to the police for the period 1971-1975. Kobler (1975:164) documents a consistent 5 to 1 ratio of police killing to police killed during the 1960s. More than half of those killed by police are members of minority groups (Sherman, 1980:11). A 1963 study of eight major cities found that the police homicide rate for blacks was nine times higher than for whites (Robin, 1963). Police killings vary greatly between jurisdictions. For the period 1950-1960, the rates ranged from 1.4 deaths per 10,000 police officers in Boston to 63.4 deaths per 10,000 officers in Akron, Ohio (Robin, 1963). Kania and Mackey (1977) found that, for the years 1961-1970, police in Georgia had the highest rate of killing of 37.9 per one million residents, while police in Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin killed slightly under three persons per one million residents. The patterns revealed in survey research have provided the basis for efforts to explain police violence. Kania and Mackey's (1977) ecological study found a significant relationship between the rate of police homicide and the level of violent crime in the community. They suggest that police are predisposed to use violence against citizens in response to the level of violence they encounter in their working environment. Jacobs and Britt (1979), using the same data, found that police homicides were highest in states with the greatest economic inequality. Their findings challenge previous interpretations of police violence simply as a response to levels of violence in the community. Some researchers have suggested that occupational stress may also be a factor in police killings. Research has shown that police suffer disproportionately from stress-related health problems (including gastrointestinal disorders and heart disease), alcoholism, marital and family problems, emotional disorders and suicide (Duncan, 1979:v). Blackmore (1978) argues that police hostility and aggression may also be related to occupational stress. Another explanation, rooted in the sociology of occupations, emphasizes the influence of the work environment on attitudes, values, and behavior. Westley (1953:216) was the first to apply this perspective to police violence: