Guns, Cars and Cops: Making the Rules

The circumstances in which a police officer can fire at a moving vehicle have significantly narrowed in some cities, often after controversial shooting incidents. Here are eight cities’ policies, their degree of restrictiveness, what produced them and their effect on police conduct since adoption.

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Michael Soller

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Los Angeles

Policy: “Firearms shall not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless a person in the vehicle is immediately threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other [emphasis in original] than the vehicle .... An officer threatened by an oncoming vehicle shall move out of its path instead of discharging a firearm at it or any of its occupants.”

Degree of restrictiveness: High

Date: Feb. 16

What prompted it: The fatal shooting Feb. 6 of Devin Brown, an unarmed 13-year-old who allegedly tried to run down an officer.

Effect: LAPD officers shot and wounded an unarmed robbery suspect as he backed toward them last week, the second time police had fired into a moving vehicle under the new policy.

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Chicago

Policy: “Firing at or into a moving vehicle is only authorized to prevent death or great bodily harm to the sworn member or another person. When confronted with an oncoming vehicle, and that vehicle is the only force used against them, sworn members will move out of the vehicle’s path.”

Degree of restrictiveness: High

Date: October 2000

What prompted it: The fatal shootings of unarmed motorists LaTanya Haggerty and Robert Russ after police chases in 1999. Both vehicles were at a stop when the shootings occurred.

Effect: Both pursuits and motorist shootings have declined, according to a police spokesman.

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Cincinnati

Policy: “Officers shall not discharge their firearms at a moving vehicle or its occupants unless the occupants are using deadly force against the officer or another person present, by means other than the vehicle.”

Degree of restrictiveness: High

Date: October 1999

What prompted it: An officer shot and wounded shoplifting suspect Timothy Blair, whose out-of-control car seriously injured 5-year-old Donald Bush III in 1998. In March 1999, drug suspect Michael Carpenter was shot and killed as he drove away from an officer trying to pull him from his car.

Effect: Police have not fired at a moving vehicle since the policy went into effect, according to a spokesman.

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San Diego

Policy: “Firearms may be fired at the driver or other occupant of a vehicle only when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or others, and the use of deadly force does not create a danger to the public.”

Degree of restrictiveness: Medium

Date: March 2004

What prompted it: The revision did not respond to a specific incident involving a moving vehicle, but was part of an effort to reduce all officer-involved shootings, which in the late 1990s were among the highest in the state.

Effect: Police shootings have fallen significantly since reforms started.

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Detroit

Policy: “[Officers cannot fire] at or from a moving vehicle.”

Degree of restrictiveness: High

Date: July 2003

What prompted it: Detroit entered into a federal consent decree with the Justice Department in July 2003 to update its use-of-force policies after several police shootings. The Detroit Free Press found in 2000 that the city had the nation’s highest rate of fatal officer-involved shootings, 1.5 times L.A.’s rate.

Effect: None. The department has not yet adopted a new use-of-force policy.

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Denver

Policy: Officers may not fire at or from moving vehicles “except in self-defense or defense of another from what the officer reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force.”

Degree of restrictiveness: Medium

Date: September 2004

What prompted it: Broader changes in the department’s use-of-force policies as part of a lawsuit settlement in the shooting of a developmentally disabled teenager. From 1990 to 2000, four of the five officers disciplined in shootings had fired at motorists.

Effect: A Denver police officer fired at a vehicle in December as it drove toward her, according to police. No one was injured.

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Houston

Policy: The department “does not prohibit an officer from shooting at a vehicle,” according to a spokesman. The department’s long-standing policy states that an officer “will not justify the use of deadly force” by intentionally placing themselves in front of a moving vehicle.

Degree of restrictiveness: Low

Effect: A Houston Chronicle investigation found that the city’s police officers shot 14 motorists from 1999 to 2004. In the same period, the Harris County Sheriff’s Department shot 22 motorists, 19 of them unarmed. Harris County revised its use-of-force policy in July 2004 to restrict shooting at moving vehicles.

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Portland, Ore.

Policy: “A member justified in using deadly physical force may shoot at, or from, a moving vehicle if, in the totality of the situation, the additional risks are clearly outweighed by the need to use deadly physical force.”

Degree of restrictiveness: Low

Date: A new policy generally forbidding officers to shoot at moving vehicles is under consideration.

What’s prompting it: A review of officer-involved shootings was underway when a police officer killed driver Kendra James as she attempted to flee a traffic stop in 2003, prompting a $10-million civil-rights lawsuit. In March 2004, police killed motorist James Perez in a traffic stop.

Effect: None. The department has not yet adopted a new use-of-force policy.