alkahest: Are there laws regarding when a police officer is allowed to discharge his firearm?
Are there laws, or just policies?
If, while performing his duties, an officer fired his weapon (assuming there wasn’t a threat to his safety) would he be committing a crime?
If so, what would the crime(s) be?
Yes, I realize that there has to be a threat for an officer to use his firearm.
My question is whether this is an actual law, or if it is just departmental policy.
Answers and Views:
Answer by MMA
Of course he can’t use his firearms if there is no crime. I know with taser guns they have to check them in at the end of every day to make sure that it was not discharged.
He is only allowed to use it if there is a threat to his or another person’s safety.
Answer by I-need-2-know-it-allFirearms officers may only shoot somebody when they are stopping an imminent threat to life.Answer by Jay
Policy and in some narrow situations it could be a violation of the law. I have never heard of an officer who discharged his gun except by accident or while defending himself or another citizen.Answer by laughter_every_day
yes there are laws. There are also department policies. Both are local, not worldwide.Answer by Kasey C
They are policies.
In general, discharge of firearms is only authorized for the cop to
1) protect him or herself from reasonable perceived imminent harm; or
2) protect someone else from reasonably perceived imminent harm
A police can shoot a suspect trying to kill someone else, or at least perceived to be doing so. Someone charging at you or someone else with a knife in hand raised high certainly qualifies.
Depending on the circumstances, it could go as high as murder 1.
A BART police officer who shot a man lying down in Oakland is being tried in LA. Right now they’re trying to decide Murder 1, Murder 2, or Manslaughter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BART_Police_shooting_of_Oscar_Grant
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Kasey C, PC guru since Apple II days
All generalizations are false, including this one.
There are both laws and policies that govern when an officer may use his firearm. Typically an officer can use his weapon to defend himself or others when life is endangered. But, depending on the departmental policies, federal and/or state laws, an officer may also be allowed to use his weapon to euthanize an animal, stop a convict from escaping and even preventing others from gaining access to or removing items of National Security.
If an officer used his weapon in a way that didn’t comply with the laws and policies, that officer can face charges for everything from Murder to Civil Rights violations.
Answer by AlexIf, while performing his duties, an officer fired his weapon (assuming there wasn’t a threat to his safety) would he be committing a crime? the officer would just get another officer to say that he followed their procedures and he would be let offAnswer by Leslie S
Laws and policies and regulations.
Violation of the law gets you a record. violation of policy gets you fired, violation of rules gets you at least suspended or fired.
The laws are different in each state and change from time to time.
In my state when I started we could use deadly force (shooting, trying to run over with a car, throwing a rock at) people who we had reasonable belief violated any of 9 major felonies or for self-defense or the defense of another.
While the state said 9 my department said 6. The state said anytime you could use deadly force you could fire a warning shot. My departments said no warning shots, to dangerous.
Within a few years the state had it down to 5 major felonies and the department said never at a moving vehicle.Later the department changed that but the vehicle could not be aimed at a police officer on when it was aimed at a civilian.
Now that is one state, one department and only a few laws and policies.
Each stae has diffenrt laws and all are availble on line. Most alrger cities alos post thier policies on all types of stuff on line. there are about 5,000 departmts large enough in the US that do that.
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