By Kate Mather
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Police Commission voted Tuesday to require officers to try, whenever possible, to defuse tense encounters before firing their guns — a policy shift that marks a significant milestone in the board’s attempts to curb shootings by police.
The new rules formally incorporate a decades-old concept called “de-escalation” into the Los Angeles Police Department’s policy outlining how and when officers can use deadly force. As a result, officers can now be judged specifically on whether they did all they could to reduce tensions before resorting to their firearms.
Tuesday’s unanimous vote caps a 13-month effort by the Police Commission to revise the policy. Two sentences will be added to the department’s manual, the first of which tells officers they must try to de-escalate a situation — “whenever it is safe and reasonable to do so” — by taking more time to let it unfold, moving away from the person and trying to talk to him or her, and calling in other resources.
Not everyone supported the new policy, however. The American Civil Liberties Union sent the commission a letter before Tuesday’s meeting expressing concern the revisions did not go far enough to explicitly state that de-escalation would be considered when determining whether an officer’s use of force was reasonable.
Without such language, the letter said, the ACLU urged commissioners to “refuse to accept the proposed revisions as complete.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, the commission’s inspector general said because commissioners can consider whether an officer’s actions before a shooting contributed to that shooting, the revisions do allow the panel to consider an officer’s de-escalation efforts — or lack of them — when deciding if a shooting was justified or not.
New training and directives from the LAPD reinforce the importance of de-escalation and the policy change, the inspector general, Alex Bustamante, added.
The revamped policy is the latest in a series of changes the five-person Police Commission has made in hopes of reducing shootings by officers. For almost two years, the civilian panel has pushed LAPD brass for more training and to provide officers with less-lethal devices, as well as a stronger emphasis on avoiding deadly force whenever possible.
Other law enforcement agencies have done the same. As criticism of policing flared across the country, particularly after deadly shootings by officers, officials looked to de-escalation as a way to help restore public trust. Like the LAPD, agencies have emphasized the approach in training and policies.
In Seattle, the Police Department’s manual requires that officers attempt de-escalation strategies and lists some examples, such as trying to calm someone down verbally, calling a mental health unit to the scene or asking for help from officers with less-lethal devices. Santa Monica, Calif., police have similar rules in place, telling officers to try to “slow down, reduce the intensity or stabilize the situation” to minimize the need to use force.
The focus on de-escalation represents a broader shift in law enforcement, said Samuel Walker, a retired criminal justice professor and expert in police accountability. Now, he said, there’s an understanding that officers can shape how an encounter plays out. Just as some approaches increase the likelihood that force will be used, others will reduce those chances. The LAPD’s new policy reflects that, Walker said.
“This is absolutely the right thing to do,” he added.
The move comes after a year in which the Police Commission ruled eight shootings by LAPD officers were unjustified — the highest number in at least a decade, according to a Los Angeles Times review of nearly 440 shootings reviewed since 2007.
At the same time, the Times found, commissioners more often faulted the tactics officers used before a shooting, such as forgetting to carry a Taser or splitting from a partner during a foot chase. Last year, the panel decided there were tactical errors in 50 percent of the 46 shootings it reviewed, up from 32 percent the year before and 16 percent a decade ago.
Also on Tuesday, the LAPD released a 400-plus page report detailing how and when officers used force in 2016. It was the second year in a row that the department published such an analysis, another effort designed to help identify ways to reduce the amount of force officers use.
The number of shootings fell last year, down to 40 from 48 in 2015. Nineteen people were killed by police gunfire, a slight decrease from the 21 killed in 2015.
In more than half of the shootings last year, police shot at someone who had a gun, according to the LAPD’s report. Four more involved someone with a replica or pellet gun. Five others involved knives or some other type of edged weapon.
The number of incidents involving less-serious forms of force — such as when an officer grabs someone or uses a less-lethal device — rose by 100 last year, to 1,925. Officers used Tasers in 573 of those encounters — about 50 more times than last year.
The report outlined the efforts the LAPD has made in recent months to reduce shootings by officers: More Tasers have been deployed across the department, and more officers have been assigned to mental health units. Only four of the people shot at last year showed signs of mental illness, a significant drop from 2015, when nearly a third of the 48 people fired upon showed such signs.
In addition, the report said, LAPD brass issued a department-wide directive last fall outlining how officers should try to de-escalate confrontations. There is also a new policy in place requiring a supervisor and officers with a bean-bag shotgun or another less-lethal device that shoots foam rounds to respond to calls reporting people armed with edged weapons. Supervisors must also respond to calls involving people showing signs of mental illness.
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