When Police Kill

Franklin Zimring, criminologist and law professor at UC Berkley, was a guest on EconTalk and they discussed his 2017 book, When Police Kill.  He posited that police are far too willing to resort to deadly force.  Far more people are killed by police than are executed after a conviction.  To resolve this, he suggested specific rules for police officers so as to reduce the number of civilian deaths.  For example, a suspect armed with a gun is a truly lethal threat but a knife or a bat is virtually never lethal according to the statistics.  Therefore, rules should be established for not shooting given certain circumstances.  If the officer does shoot, sanctions can be imposed and the police department can be sued.  Many civilians die because police continue to shoot.  If struck by one bullet, survival odds are good.  With each additional bullet, the odds of death go up.  Zimring proposes a stop shooting rule.  Zimring observed that NYC was a model to follow as the civilian deaths had fallen from 70+ a year in the 1970s to less than 10.  However, he doesn't detail what NYC did to improve the numbers.  Did NYPD institute his new rules?

Overall, I found his proposals to be mostly ludicrous.  The reason that bats and knives are rarely lethal to police officers is because the assailant brought a knife/bat to a gunfight.  If police must match threat level, the lethality of knives and bats will go up.  He puts most of the onus on the police to prevent civilian deaths but none on the assailants.  Gee, if you didn't rush the officer, fight with the officer, refuse to follow instructions, you would be just fine in 99% of the cases.  On the EconTalk webpage, the comments were almost all in opposition to Zimring's arguments.

Though the topic is clearly an important and timely one, Zimring is the wrong person to address it.  He came across as anti-police rather than someone out to improve policing.  His primary method of modifying police behavior was to expose them to substantial fines.  Police departments already get sued and it is the taxpayer who pays.

Generally, not an episode I would suggest.  I was mostly annoyed by it.  As mentioned, the commentary was almost entirely anti-Zimring and often more thoughtful than Zimring.  I got a better understanding of police shootings based on the commentary than from the podcast.