Deadly Force

Your editorial (“The Lingering Question of a Tragedy,” Sept. 9) is flawed in its premise.

You report that the district attorney found the May 21 shooting on I-5 was legally justifiable, but then go on to say that “his decision does little to answer the main question in this tragedy: Could the victim have been subdued another way?”

Naturally it does little to answer that question. Resolving “what if” questions is not the district attorney’s function in reviewing officer-involved shootings. There is a popular misconception about that function, and now is an opportune time to clean up the record.

There is no statute or other legal requirement that the district attorney review police shootings at all. He took that task upon himself in order to assure the public that officers use deadly force only in accordance with the standards set forth in California law. He does not act as community referee or police procedure expert to determine if some other action might have brought some other result.

The question before the district attorney is simple; the facts often are not. The question is whether the officer’s conduct can be shown to be criminal--that is, was he not legally privileged to use deadly force. That, in turn, usually hinges on the question of whether the officer reasonably perceived himself or other persons to be in imminent danger of great bodily injury or death.

The officer does not have to be accurate in his perception. He does have to be reasonable. He does not have to be perfect in his judgment. He does not have to choose what Monday morning quarterbacks might eventually decide is the wisest and most humane course.

It is extremely rare that an officer will be shown to have used deadly force illegally. That no officer has been charged with a crime for the on-duty use of his weapon since 1984 is something we should expect, not something that should surprise us. We all wish the trowel-wielding deranged man on the freeway had not been killed. But our being sad does not make the officer a criminal.

Whether there was some better way to handle that incident--which officers first did attempt to resolve without use of deadly force--does not bear on the determination of criminal responsibility on the part of the shooting officer. Therefore, it is not covered in what the news media, including The Times’ editorial, have taken to calling the D.A.’s “report,” a term which suggests a wide-ranging exploration of the law, the facts and policy matters.

Anybody expecting that is going to be disappointed.

STEVEN J. CASEY

Special Assistant to

Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller