What Is This Lethaldb.com Shooting Justification Rating All About?

If you go to my datacard for Michael Brown, you'll see a category called "Lethaldb.com Shooting Justification Rating", with a value in this case set to 2. Every datacard in the Lethal Force Database regarding a person who was shot to death by police has this category. What does this number mean, and how did I come up with it?

That's what this blog post is for.

When I first began investigating police officers’ use of lethal force in 2014, I quickly found that police officers perceived imminent threats that they deemed warranted lethal force from a myriad of suspect behaviors. Often the decedent had fired a gun at or near police, or the decedent had aimed a gun towards police, or at least raised their gun up. Frequently police officers claimed to have felt in imminent danger from a suspect approaching the officer with a knife upraised. Or shootings occurred during physical struggles with officers who felt that they were unable to use less lethal force to stop the suspect from resisting.

But no matter what type of threat was perceived by the officer, they were almost always determined justified by a district attorney or grand jury. Officers who picked fights with suspects or placed themselves in front of suspects’ cars faced the same amount of criminal culpability as officers who bravely faced suspects determined to shoot it out with cops. It seemed to me that criminal culpability wasn’t a strong enough measure to determine which shootings were unjustified in more of a moral sense than a legal sense.

So I came up with a shooting justification rating, and I call it the Lethaldb.com Shooting Justification Rating (clever, I know). The rating is based on a five-point scale, with a rating of 5 indicating the most justified type of fatal shooting and a rating of 1 indicating the least justified type of fatal shooting.  What do I mean by justified? I believe that a police officer who shoots and kills a person with an incredibly lethal weapon (gun) who demonstrates a willingness to use it (is currently firing the gun) has potentially saved lives of both officers and bystanders despite the taking of a life, and the officer’s use of lethal force should be considered highly justified. But an officer who shoots and kills a person without a weapon and who is not confronting officers or bystanders with threatening behavior has only uselessly taken a life for no benefit of the community, and the officer deserves the lowest justification rating possible. But then there are stages in between, like when force is necessary, but gunfire is perhaps excessive, or when a deadly threat is merely potential instead of kinetic.

I’ve done my best to identify the reason that police felt they needed to shoot their guns right at the moment that they did. The Shooting Justification Rating is determined based on the analysis of the incident written by an authority tasked with judicial review of the investigation, like a district attorney. If there is no judicial review or investigation into the shooting, then the Shooting Justification Rating is based on the police department’s narrative of the incident, usually released to the media shortly after the shooting happens. If clear video of the shooting exists and it conflicts with the police narrative, the Shooting Justification Rating is based on the video evidence.

WEAPON: GUN

The Lethaldb.com Shooting Justification Rating ranges from 2 to 5 for decedents carrying real guns, depending on immediacy of the threat level. A point is subtracted in each threat category if the gun turned out to be a replica or non-lethal firearm.

Rating	If the decedent had a gun
5	Decedent was firing gun at officers or others
4	Decedent was aiming a real gun at officers or others; OR decedent was firing a non-lethal firearm like a starter’s pistol, air rifle or BB gun.
3	Decedent was confrontational with officers and holding a real gun; OR decedent was aiming or pointing a non-lethal, replica, or toy firearm
2	Decedent was non-confrontational but holding a real gun; OR decedent was confrontational with officers and holding a non-lethal, replica, or toy firearm; OR decedent had a real gun holstered on his/her person
1	Decedent was non-confrontational but holding a non-lethal, replica, or toy firearm

WEAPON: KNIFE

The Lethaldb.com Shooting Justification Rating ranges from 1 to 4 for decedents carrying knives. This is a step down from the rating for guns because knives are much less lethal than guns.

Rating	If the decedent had a weapon with a blade (knife)
4	Decedent was stabbing an officer or someone else with a knife when shot
3	Decedent was charging towards or lunging at an officer or someone else with a knife when shot
2	Decedent was confrontational with officers and holding a knife
1	Decedent was non-confrontational but holding a knife

WEAPON: VEHICLE

Vehicles are not usually thought of as weapons, but they can be very dangerous to officers in certain circumstances. Officer involved shootings due to suspects in vehicles is highly controversial though in part because bullets can only kill drivers, not stop moving vehicles from becoming dangerous.

Rating	If the decedent was driving a vehicle
4	Decedent was striking an officer (or another) on foot with the vehicle, and the officer had neither jumped in front of the car (thereby knowingly placing himself in jeopardy) nor been able to touch the car when it was stopped (an indication of the speed, and hence lethality, of the vehicle at the moment the officer fired his gun)
3	Decedent was striking an officer on foot, but the officer had either jumped in front of the car or had been able to touch the car when it was stopped (or both); OR decedent was charging toward an officer (or another) on foot with a vehicle, and the officer had neither been able to jump in front of the car nor been able to touch the car when it was stopped
2	Decedent was striking an occupied police vehicle; OR decedent was charging toward an occupied police vehicle; OR decedent was charging toward an officer on foot, but the officer had either jumped in front of the car or had been able to touch the car when it was stopped (or both)
1	Decedent was non-confrontational but driving a vehicle (usually fleeing)

WEAPON: OTHER

Other types of weapons include hammers, clubs, baseball bats, rocks, etc. (usually bludgeoning-type weapons). Because bludgeoning-type weapons are less lethal than knives, the justification for using lethal force against someone striking an officer with, let’s say, a rock is lower than for a knife. However, an officer shooting a suspect charging at or being confrontational while holding an unusual weapon gets the same justification as a suspect holding a knife.

Rating	If the decedent had another type of weapon (usually some kind of bludgeoning weapon)
3	Decedent was striking an officer or someone else with the weapon when shot; OR decedent was charging towards or lunging at an officer or someone else with the weapon when shot
2	Decedent was confrontational with officers and holding the weapon
1	Decedent was non-confrontational but holding a weapon

WEAPON: NONE

Using lethal force against an unarmed person could never be as justified as using lethal force against a person shooting a gun or stabbing with a knife, but an officer facing a suspect using his fists should be as justified in using lethal force as an officer facing a suspect using some other bludgeoning weapon. Besides situations involving actual physical violence, I think there are three other scenarios where shooting an unarmed suspect shouldn’t be completely unjustified.

First, suspects who actually charge at the officer (like Michael Brown), intent on physical harm. The threat is immediate, though the degree is less than lethal. There were 26 of these types of incidents during the 18-month window from January 2014 through June 2015. 

Second, suspects who are reaching out to grab a real firearm. The threat is not yet immediate, but the degree of the threat is quite lethal. There were only eight of these types of incidents during the 18-month window from January 2014 through June 2015, and three of them involved officers believing the suspect was reaching for the officer’s gun. 

Third, suspects who use an object to fool police into thinking they are holding guns. There is no threat to officers, of course, but the shooting was at least not unprompted. There were twenty of these types of incidents from January 2014 through June 2015.

Rating	If the decedent was unarmed
3	Decedent was in a physical struggle with a police officer or someone else
2	Decedent was charging at a police officer (or someone else); OR decedent was in close proximity to a real firearm and was reaching for it; OR decedent was holding a non-weapon in a threatening way to try to prompt a police response
1	Decedent was in close proximity to a replica, toy or BB gun and was reaching for it; OR decedent was non-compliant with orders but not physically threatening to officers or others; OR decedent was compliant with orders and also not physically threatening to officers or others

Every other situation gets a justification rating of 1. Officers often shoot unarmed people because they are unable to see the suspect’s hands and believe the hands may be concealing a gun. But in my opinion, the uncertainty of a threat should not justify the use of force intent on killing a person, even with 20/20 hindsight. 

The Lethaldb.com Shooting Justification Rating is merely a subjective rating, but I was able to apply it to the vast majority of lethal shooting incidents (1403 of 1406 incidents from January 2014 through June 2015). Here are two examples of the kinds of analysis that can be performed using this data.