Shootings by Police Have More Than Tripled : Crime: Lawmen defend the five-year increase as justifiable in a more violent society. Critics disagree.

The number of people shot by local law enforcement officers has more than tripled in the past five years, a fact that prompts questions by police critics but is defended by lawmen as a justifiable response to a rising tide of drugs, crime and violence.

A review of about 135 reports of officer-involved shootings dating to 1985 at the San Diego County district attorney’s office indicates the trend shows no sign of ending this year: 16 people have been shot by area police since Jan. 1--nine of them in the past month alone.

Included in the recent rash of shootings are that of an unarmed 21-year-old Vista construction worker who was killed by a San Diego County sheriff’s reserve deputy, and of a 24-year-old man wielding a cement trowel on Interstate 5 who was slain by a San Diego police officer.

Those deaths generated a barrage of public questions about whether police officers are trigger-happy. In the case of the Vista shooting May 18, which will be the subject of separate investigations by the FBI and the county grand jury, deputies shot Jeffrey Bray as he backed his pickup--reportedly inadvertently--into their patrol car.

Three days later, numerous rush-hour drivers expressed horror after witnessing the freeway shooting, saying they believed the three officers at the scene should have been able to peacefully arrest the trowel-wielding man rather than kill him.

“He was right on the stripe in my lane and it was obvious he was mentally imbalanced,” said Betty Wheeler, legal director of the local American Civil Liberties Union, who happened to drive by the scene on her way to work that morning. “But it never occurred to me he was in danger of being shot by the police.”

Wheeler, in an interview last week, expressed outrage when told about the increasing number of officer-related deaths in the county since 1985.

“This cries out for immediate response and immediate answers from law enforcement heads to ensure that this quick-to-draw mentality is turned around,” she said. “This calls for immediate action to make sure all these incidents are not repeated.”

But San Diego Deputy Police Chief Manny Guaderrama said he is not surprised by the increase in the number of officer-involved shootings.

“We’re seeing a proliferation of guns in the hands of people on the street, and we’re seeing a tremendous amount of drugs and gang activity,” he said. “The actions by some of the criminals are more violent than they use to be.”

With crime rising, Guaderrama said, police are also mindful of a rash of officer deaths that jarred the area in the mid-1980s.

“In our training, we tell our officers, ‘Be cautious. Be careful. Be alert,’ ” he said. “We want them to use a lot of caution and to think of the consequences. But if their life is in danger, or the life of an innocent person, the officer has discretion to use deadly force.

“I can’t say the officers are using too much force. In most situations, the other person was using some kind of deadly force.”

In the vast majority of shootings involving police officers over the past five years, officers shot people who threatened them and others with guns, knives, rocks and, more and more frequently, cars. Many of the victims were also under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and others were suffering from depression or other mental problems.

The review of the shooting reports shows that 11 people were shot in 1985, and that the figure rose to 37 for 1989. In 1985, 5 people were fatally shot by officers, while last year that number climbed to 16, according to the district attorney’s office, which reviews all local police shootings as a matter of course.

(The review included shootings involving officers with the county Sheriff’s Department and the various municipal law enforcement agencies in the county. It did not include shootings by state and federal agencies, such as the U.S. Border Patrol and the former Border Crime Prevention Unit, which was involved in a large number of shootings in border canyons.)

By far, officers with the San Diego Police Department have been involved in the most shootings--both fatal and non-fatal--in the past five years. Six people were wounded or killed by San Diego police in 1985; the figure rose to 23 last year. Already this year, 10 of the 16 people shot or killed in the county were hit by bullets fired by San Diego police officers.

The San Diego Police Department’s guidelines on the discharge of a weapon is contained in only six sentences, and states that, other than for practice at a firing range, a weapon is to be used only to save a life or prevent serious injury.

“I don’t know how much more restrictive you can get, short of not carrying weapons at all,” said Lt. Greg Clark. “But in this society, there’s a lot of firearms out there.”

With the shootings increasing steadily in San Diego County, law enforcement experts say it is difficult if not impossible to accurately compare this region with others. They point out that each city or county is unique in terms of population, police size and crime rate. Another factor is San Diego’s proximity to the border and its growing drug problem--something that might not translate to other areas.

No state or national figures are readily available, but several experts said they believe police shootings are increasing nationwide. The state Commission on Peace Officer Training and Standards (POST) does not monitor the number of police shootings in California--nor, for that matter, does it recommend policies on when officers should shoot. That is a matter for local department discretion, taking into account state and federal laws and court cases, a POST spokesman said.

The California Department of Justice tracks the number of homicides by peace officers that were ruled justifiable--but not the number of peace officer shootings where there was not a death.

In 1985, 91 people were killed by California peace officers; in 1988--the last year for which statistics are now available--101 were killed.

“There’s not a hell of a lot of detailed information available on officer-involved shootings,” said Hubert Williams, president of the Police Foundation, a national, nonprofit group that studies policing techniques.

“And it’s even harder making cross-departmental comparisons because of how the various departments record and investigate shooting incidents. In fact, in some departments, only the shooting officer has to write a report and the other officer, his partner, doesn’t. Then you’ve got to question the accuracy of the report, especially if the shooter feels he may be placing himself in jeopardy by what he puts down.”

The San Diego County district attorney’s review of police shootings during the past five years has in every case reached the same conclusion: The shooting was justifiable.

The last time an officer was criminally prosecuted in the county was in 1984, when Escondido Police Officer David DeLange stood trial for the slaying of Leslie Landersman, a 22-year-old office secretary who was taken hostage, then shot to death while trying to flee her abductor. DeLange was acquitted.

In fact, police officers are seldom criticized by the district attorney for their actions, except for an occasional episode such as the highly celebrated Tommie Dubose slaying in 1988.

In that case, San Diego police officers burst into Dubose’s home to search for drugs allegedly being dealt by his children. But they surprised Dubose, who, apparently unaware they were officers, wrestled with one policeman over his gun and then was shot by another officer.

The district attorney found nothing criminally wrong in the shooting, but did chastise police for how they entered the home.

“It’s not our role to be tough on cops,” said Michael R. Pent, who, as head of the district attorney’s special operations unit, examines all local police shootings for any criminal liability on the part of officers. “It’s our role to independently review the evidence, thoroughly and impartially, and reach a conclusion about the nature of the force used and whether it was justified. It’s our job to be fair, and that’s what we’re doing.”

At the same time, Pent said he feels the crush from the high number of cases now crossing his desk. Neither he nor other law enforcement experts around the country said they know what to do, if anything, about the rising number of police shootings.

“There has to be clear and compelling evidence that an officer acted negligently, or with wanton disregard, for a grand jury to indict him or a trial jury to convict him for shooting someone,” said Williams of the Police Foundation.

“Prosecutions--and convictions even more so--are rare,” he said. “That’s largely because who wants to second-guess an officer’s mind? We as a society want a police officer who is assertive, who will aggressively pursue crime and criminality, the kind of person who is best capable of protecting the innocent from the criminals.

“Juries will generally side with an officer--even an officer who says he saw something glisten and he thought it was a gun, but turned out to be a cigarette lighter,” Williams said.

A year ago, the county grand jury, which reviewed the Dubose shooting, also reviewed the San Diego Police Department’s shooting policies. The grand jury found that the policies were appropriate and that they were being followed correctly by officers in other shootings as well.

Interviews with police instructors throughout Southern California and the United States indicate that local training methods and policies governing when an officer can shoot to kill are generally consistent with the norm.

Generally, and based on a 1984 U. S. Supreme Court decision, peace officers can use lethal force if they feel they or other officers--or innocent bystanders--are in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury, or if the target of their bullets is a fleeing felon who would pose a danger to the community if not apprehended or shot.

Deputy Al Guerin II, who teaches a class on the use of deadly force at the sheriff’s training academy, said there are many hypotheses on why the number of shootings by peace officers is rising--and he has his own.

“We got through the ‘60s and ‘70s when the big drug problem was marijuana and heroin, and everyone was either laid-back or just wanted to sleep,” Guerin said. “Today we’re dealing with stimulants--cocaine, crack and methamphetamines. So we’re seeing more stimulated violence.”

Guerin and other police trainers and supervisors characterized today’s criminals--especially those involved in drug trafficking--as better armed, and more predisposed to shoot at lawmen, than in the past.

Indeed, more officers are turning to semiautomatic weapons to better match the firepower of their opponents, and officers are typically trained to shoot in “taps,” or two or three successive shots, and then evaluate whether the target is stopped or whether another “tap” is necessary.

So there is a fine line, they said, in preparing young deputies and beat cops on when to shoot and when not to.

To assist in preparing officers for quick decision making, many departments involve role-playing exercises and computer-assisted simulations in which officers are scored on how quick they react to life-threatening situations and how accurately they shoot to kill the target, or whether they wait too long to decide and are “killed” themselves, or whether they shoot and injure innocent people.

“The recruits tend to shoot more freely than the older deputies,” Guerin said.

For all the policies on when to shoot or not shoot, officers said that, in the end, their decision is based on gut reaction or instinct, or, as Guerin said, “when he’s scared . . . “

“The problem with simulations,” said Sgt. Mike Conta, a Los Angeles Police Department training officer, “is that there are an endless number of possible scenarios, of events we’ll run up against on the street, and we can’t predict and train for each one.”

Los Angeles County sheriff’s Lt. Bill Reagan, who teaches the use of deadly force for his department’s training academy, said officers decide whether to use their weapons in matters of “milliseconds,” relying instinctively on the combination of training and experience they have received.

“Cops develop a sixth sense to detect that something’s not quite right about a situation,” he said. “And I feel that the streets today are more dangerous than they were 10 or 15 years ago. There are more people willing to shoot it out with police officers.”

Are instructors warning cadets about a more volatile society, and putting young officers on the street who might be more quick to use their weapons?

“We’re not teaching them that it’s more threatening out there and they’ve got to be quicker on the draw,” Reagan said. “But we’re all reading and hearing about all the shootings, and we know it’s a . . . lot more dangerous out there. There are more people who are more willing to take on a police officer than ever before.

“Our philosophy hasn’t changed. It’s the people out there who have changed by challenging authority--and it’s the police officer who is taking the brunt of it.”

Added Wendell Phillips, a deputy sheriff in Sacramento and president of the California Council of Police and Sheriffs:

“The average citizen doesn’t understand that when I walk up to him at night, I don’t know who I’m stopping--whether it’s the chairman of the Rotary Club or Public Enemy No. 1. You can pull a gun from a hiding place and shoot me before I can pull the trigger. That’s because you’ve already made up your mind to shoot me, and I still haven’t made the decision to shoot you.”

Countless cops have faced that dilemma.

“I didn’t have time to think rationally about it,” said San Diego County sheriff’s Deputy Perry Templeton, who, in 1987, shot and killed a man suspected of attempted armed robbery in Vista.

Templeton had pulled over the suspect’s vehicle and was out of his unmarked car and standing between the two vehicles, trying to turn back bystanders, when the suspect accelerated backward at him.

“If you try to review shooting criteria 1 through 5, by the time you get to No. 5, you’re dead,” Templeton said.

Another sheriff’s detective, William Hubler, described what happened when a supposedly routine traffic stop turned volatile, and the driver attacked him.

“None of the training came into play. It was all too fast,” he said of the incident, in which the two struggled for control of his gun. “I was just starting to pull the trigger because my gun was into his chest, and at the same time I was able to knock him off me. He staggered backward, so I dropped my arm just as my gun went off. The shot went between his legs.”

He added: “Let’s hope that I’m not thinking about whether I’ll be civilly sued, fired or criminally prosecuted when I have to decide to shoot, because if I did think about those things, I’d be dead and it wouldn’t end up mattering.”

NUMBER OF PERSONS SHOT BY LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY

TOTAL FATAL NON-FATAL 1985 11 5 6 1986 18 5 13 1987 22 8 14 1988 30 10 20 1989 37 16 21 1990* 16 4 12

* Through the end of May

(NOTE: The shootings are only those by the sheriff’s department and the various municipal law enforcement agencies in the county. State and federal agencies, such as those along the international border, are not included.)

Source: San Diego County District Attorney’s Office