Proposed LAPD Rule Would Limit Firing at Moving Cars

A draft of a new Los Angeles Police Department policy would restrict when officers could fire at moving cars, but Police Chief William J. Bratton warned that the rules wouldn’t eliminate such incidents.

Shootings of motorists by officers have come under renewed scrutiny since the death Sunday of a 13-year-old boy killed by an LAPD officer after a high-speed pursuit.

The change in departmental policy “is not going to be a cure-all. All of a sudden these incidents aren’t going to go away,” Bratton said in an interview. “There will always be exigent circumstances where an officer will have to fire on a vehicle.”

The chief said the policy was now being written and would be presented Tuesday to the Police Commission. An early draft obtained Thursday by The Times says officers would be prohibited from firing at moving or fleeing vehicles unless the people inside had weapons that threatened police or bystanders.

The policy also states that officers should not consider a moving car to be a weapon, and it directs police to get out of the path of any oncoming vehicles.

“Firearms should not be discharged at a moving or fleeing vehicle unless the officer or another person is currently being threatened with deadly force by means other than a moving vehicle,” the document says.

But the draft will continue to allow police to shoot at vehicles in some cases -- if doing so is the only way to save lives, for example.

“There is no policy that can probably give you a total prohibition,” Bratton said.

The chief first proposed a new policy on the issue in February of last year after LAPD officers killed the driver of a car in Santa Monica after a 90-minute pursuit.

A panel of high-ranking LAPD officers made a confidential recommendation Monday that the shooting in that case be ruled “out of policy,” which would allow the officers to be disciplined, according to sources familiar with the case.

Although Bratton determined almost a year ago that a new policy was needed, none had yet been adopted. This week, after the Devin Brown shooting, the chief agreed under pressure from Mayor James K. Hahn and members of the Police Commission to fast-track the new policy.

“This was a carefully well-thought-out policy we’ve been working on. Was it accelerated in response to the people I work for? Certainly,” Bratton said.

The new policy notes that the rules “will not cover every conceivable situation. In such situations, officers are expected to act with intelligence, sound judgment, attending to the spirit of the policy.”

Law enforcement experts agreed that even the strictest shooting policy should give officers some discretion.

“In extreme cases, an officer could get stuck on the ground in front of car or about to be pinned against a wall,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor who helps police with deadly-force policies. “The answer is strict policies such as ones that don’t allow officers to consider the car as a weapon.”

Alpert, a leading expert on shootings by police into cars, said Washington, D.C. and Miami adopted policies similar to Bratton’s proposed new rules and saw drops in such incidents.

In Miami, the Police Department enacted a policy on the subject in 2003 after several cases in which police fired at cars.

Other cities that have tightened shooting rules include Louisville, Ky.; Philadelphia; and Boston. Alpert noted that some departments took action after incidents in which bullets fired by officers at moving cars ricocheted or the cars went out of control, creating liability issues for the cities.

Existing LAPD policy “generally prohibits” firing at or from moving vehicles. Officers are entitled, however, to use deadly force to protect themselves or others from death or serious bodily injury. They are also allowed to shoot at fleeing felons suspected of causing serious harm with “substantial risk” of doing so again. Since 1985, officers have fired on motorists more than 100 times, killing more than 25 people.

Bob Baker, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents officers, said the existing policy was sufficient.

“Moving vehicles can be lethal weapons, and police officers need to be able to take action to protect themselves and the community from suspects in vehicles, just as they would if a suspect were coming at them with a gun or a knife,” he said.

“It is a sad fact that moving vehicles are too often used as weapons against police officers. In fact, just yesterday in San Diego, a defendant pleaded guilty to killing a police officer by running him down in a stolen truck.”

Devin was killed about 4 a.m. Sunday in South Los Angeles at the end of a pursuit. According to police, Officer Steve Garcia and his partner were on routine patrol near Gage and Grand avenues when they saw a maroon Toyota Camry run a red light. The officers followed the car onto the Harbor Freeway and tried to pull the driver over.

A three-minute chase ended when the driver of the Toyota -- police say it was Devin -- left the freeway, lost control of the car and drove onto the sidewalk near Western Avenue.

The officers then parked their patrol car behind the Toyota. A passenger fled. Police said that Devin backed into the right side of the officers’ car and that Garcia fired 10 times, killing the boy. Officers said they believed they were pursuing a drunk driver and didn’t know he was 13. The passenger, who is 14, was apprehended.

Police say the car was stolen, although the officers who pursued it were unaware of that.

The draft policy says bullets are extremely unlikely to stop a moving vehicle, tend to ricochet off vehicles and can disable the driver, causing crashes that injure bystanders.

Even if the Police Commission approves the policy, Bratton said, it will take several months to train officers on it.

Alpert and other experts said good training was crucial.

“The better the training, the better we hope they will react,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Charles “Sid” Heal, an expert on the use of force. “But even with the best policy and all that training, you’ll reach a point where the cognitive process of your brain is not fast enough to save a life, so as a result you go into an instinctual response.”

At the same time, Heal said, it is important for the public to know that police officers will always have the right to protect themselves. “You cannot legislate away someone’s right to defend themselves,” he said

David Klinger, a former LAPD officer and author of “Into the Killzone,” a book about police shootings, believes that some shootings involving moving vehicles could be prevented if police used better tactics.

“My experience ... is that a decent portion of those could have been avoided if the officer had not jumped out and run to the suspect’s car, if the officer had not stood in front of the suspect’s car,” he said.

But to others, the history of the LAPD shows that a policy change can only go so far.

Officers “feel that their tactics and tools are being taken away,” said Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney overseeing a committee exploring the LAPD’s Rampart Division scandal.

“They misused the chokehold, and now they’ve ended the chokehold.... They beat a suspect with a flashlight, and they take away flashlights. Now [they] shot at cars at the end of chases and now they’ll limit chase circumstances. But it’s not the tools or the tactics so much as it’s the mind-set. The mind-set on use of force is the problem.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Sampling of policies

Here’s a look at conditions under which peace officers are allowed to fire into vehicles. They may shoot when they perceive:

An imminent threat of An imminent threat of Law death or serious injury death or serious enforcement other than from the injury, including from agency car itself the car itself

Boston X Chicago X Cincinnati X Louisville, Ky. X Miami X Philadelphia X

Calif. Highway Patrol* X San Diego X San Francisco X

* The CHP is reviewing possible changes in its policy.

Source: Times research Graphics reporting by Cheryl Brownstein-Santiago and Richard Winton