Читать книгу Force Decisions. A Citizen's Guide to Understanding How Police Determine Appropriate Use of Force онлайн

61 страница из 73

The second reason is for the benefit of the officer in the aftermath. This will be covered more in section three, but for now know that there is a cost, sometimes a terrible cost, in the taking of a human life. No matter how brutal the person or under what circumstances, converting someone from living to dead is not something the normal person can do without grave psychological repercussions. Reminding someone that they needed to stop the threat, that his or her intent was to make the threat stop, not to kill, may, in some tiny way, ease the healing process. Or so we hope.

A lethal threat authorizes deadly force.

Often, even if the threat’s intent is manifestly not lethal, but his or her actions place someone in mortal danger, the officer may use deadly force. In this context, think of force not as force intended to kill, but as doing anything it takes to stay alive. A threat struggling to escape on a narrow, slippery fire escape several stories off the ground, a threat trying to drive away from a traffic stop with the officer stuck halfway through the window, or a developmentally disabled 300-pound man struggling to escape from a small room and crushing the officer may all justify deadly force.